A Survey on Safety Behaviors among Korean Elementary School Children at a Local City

Instroduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate safety education-related backgrounds and safety behaviors of elementary school children at a local area in Jeonbuk province. Methods: Study subjects were 308 5th and 6th graders from 6 schools located in J City and the data were collected from June 16-27, 2003. Research instrument to test safety behaviors was 4-points summated scale (Cronbach${\alpha}$= .94) composed of 54-items with three sub-categories school life safety (${\alpha}$= .88), traffic safety (${\alpha}$= .86), and daily life safety (${\alpha}$= .84), The data was analyzed by percentage, x2-test, t-test, ANOVA and Duncan test using SPSS/PC 10.0. Results: 1. Safety Education-related Characteristics: Safety education was mostly conducted during extracurricular hour as picnic (37%) and regular class (37.2%); and the instructors of safety education were school nurse (33.2%), classroom teacher (30.9%), and parents (23.4%) in order. About two third (71.0%) of the subjects have had many kinds of school event program such as essay writing, poster drawing, oratorical contest in the course of safety education According to gender, girl students was more favorable about school events as a effective safety education measure (x2=9.188, p= .010); and according to school location, nural school taught more at moming & closing session (x2=7.383, p= .025), by school nurse or classroom teacher (x2=36.574, p= .001), and had more frequent (x2=63.337, p= .001) safety education class. 2. Practice of safety behaviors: Mean scores of safety behaviors was $106.9{\pm}24.92$ out of 162 points. According gender, the scores of girl students (t=-3.296, p= .001) were significant higher than boy students. But there was not any significant difference according to school area According to safety education-related characteristics, the scores of safety behaviors was significantly higher in the group who thought that school event program was more effective on safety education (F=4.024, p= .019), and who were more interested in current safety education class (F= 10.203, p= .001) Conclusions: From the above findings, the authors concluded that school-based safety education was mainly conducted at extra-curricular and regular class, and by school nurse or classroom teacher in elementary school. Even though the mean scores of safety behaviors of elementary school children was in medium level, those. were significant higher in girl students and in rural school children. And extra-curricular activities and school event programs were suggested as more effective strategies for school-based safety education Based on the above findings, safety education class can be recommended in regular curricular basis; and various extracurricular activities and school event programs need to be developed for more effective school-based safety education. In addition, further study on gender-specific factors on safety behaviors and nationwide survey on school-based safety education should be needed.

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