Effect of Empowerment Building Program for Village Health Volunteers on Understanding of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever Prevention in Pattani Province

Abstract

The objectives of this experimental  research were 1)to compare the average score of community health volunteers’ understanding of dengue fever prevention between the experimental group and the control group, 2) to study the average score of community health volunteers’ ability in dengue fever prevention between the experimental group and the control group, and 3) to explore community health volunteers’ satisfaction with the community health volunteers’ potential in dengue fever prevention at the community level. Community health volunteers were recruited using specific sampling method to select districts where they lived and assign them in the experimental and the control groups, and simple random sampling was used to select sub-districts by drawing lots and the sub-districts were then assigned to the experimental and the control groups.  100 community health volunteers were selected and divided into two groups of 50, one experimental and control group.  The instrument used was a community health volunteers’ potential in dengue fever prevention program, and an interview form and a questionnaire were used to collect data.  The Kuder-Richardson (KR-20) coefficient of reliability of items was to be 0.80, and the coefficient of internal consistency of community health volunteers’ satisfaction was tested using Cronbach’s alpha and to be 0.70  General data were analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, paired t-test and independent t-test.

The study found that the results of the community health volunteers’ potential development program in dengue fever prevention were as follows.

1. The average score for understanding of dengue fever prevention between the experimental and the control groups indicated that the average score of the experimental group was 15.36 while that of the control group was 12.28. Thus, it was found that the difference was statistically significant (p<.05)
2. The average score for ability in dengue fever prevention between the experimental and the control groups indicated that the average score of the experimental group was 53.24 while that of the control group was 47.76. Thus, the difference was found to be statistically significant (p<.05)
3. . Satisfaction towards the title of each topic was 100 percent; satisfaction towards the font size was 100 percent; satisfaction towards the colors of the media was 84 percent; and satisfaction towards the pictures on the media was 86 percent.The community health volunteers’ potential development program in dengue fever prevention at the community level should be developed and extended to other groups to increase community health volunteers’ potential continuously.