ReportSkin sun-acne tutorial evaluation among middle- and high-school students in central New Jersey
Section snippets
Human participant considerations
The study was approved by our institutional review board. The school board at the study school district in central New Jersey agreed to be the site for this educational initiative. In addition, assent was obtained from each student participating in the study.
To protect student anonymity, students were randomly assigned a number for the pretest and then asked to write that same number on their posttest. Student anonymity was protected because only the student knew which number he or she was
Sample
A total of 1214 adolescents in grades 6 to 12 at 5 middle schools and 3 high schools completed the survey and pretest. Of these students, 844 also completed the posttest. The decrease in the number of posttests relative to pretests is because some of the students had to leave during the lesson and, therefore, did not have time to complete the posttest. In addition, some of the interventions were cut short for assemblies and fire drills. A description of the sample is shown in Table II. Table II
Discussion
This study has shown that SkinSAT is an effective tool for increasing knowledge about sun protection and acne. Given that the test scores of students of various sexes, ages, ethnicities, and races improved significantly from their pretest to posttest, this lesson can be administered in settings with a diverse student body. The average improvement in knowledge of 36% is greater than many previous sun-protection studies, many of which evinced no increased knowledge among participants.15
Several
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Supported by a grant from the Women's Dermatological Society (Mr Irwin).
Conflicts of interest: None identified.