A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Information Education Communication Package on Knowledge and Attitude Regarding Testicular Cancer and Testicular Self Examination among Students in a Selected College at Nagercoil

A study to assess the effectiveness of information education communication (IEC) package on knowledge and attitude regarding testicular cancer(TC) and testicular Self examination(TSE) among students in a selected college at Nagercoil, Tamilnadu, India. The objectives of the study was to assess the knowledge, attitude level regarding TC and TSE before and after IEC package, To find out the effectiveness of IEC package on knowledge and attitude regarding TC and TSE, To find the relationship between knowledge and attitude regarding TC and TSE pre test in post test and to associate the knowledge and attitude towards TC and TSE with the demographic variables in the pre and post test. An evaluative approach with pre experimental design was chosen. Hundred male students studying final year engineering in a selected college at Nagercoil were chosen by using convenice sampling. The conceptual frame work applied for this study was modified from Health Promotion Model of Nola J Pender (1982). In order to collect data a tool was prepared with three parts namely demographic variable, self-administered multiple choice questionnaire to assess the knowledge level, and a 5point Likert scale to assess the attitude. The content validity was obtained, the tool was found to be reliable (r =0.8). After conducting the pilot study on 10 selected samples. The main study was conducted for a period of one month. The collected data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results showed that in pre test 80 (80%) of the samples had inadequate knowledge regarding testicular cancer and 96 (96%) of the samples had inadequate knowledge regarding testicular self examination. None of them had adequate knowledge regarding TC and TSE. Whereas in post test 48(48%) of the samples had adequate knowledge regarding testicular cancer and 67(67%) of the samples had adequate knowledge regarding testicular self examination. There was a significant increase in the level of knowledge regarding TC and TSE after the IEC package (‘P’ value < 0.05) and similarly there was a significant change in the level of attitude from unfavorable to favorable attitude regarding TC and TSE (‘P’ value < 0.05) after IEC package. On association with the demographic variables there was a significant association with basic education of the samples and level of knowledge regarding testicular cancer at p<0.05 level in pre and post test. The findings of the study showed that none of the samples had adequate level of knowledge and favorable attitude towards TC and TSE prior to the IEC package. After the IEC package, majority of them had adequate level of knowledge and favorable attitude. Hence, the teaching programme was effective in imparting knowledge and attitude to college students towards TC and TSE.