Abstract:
Aim: The study objective is to assess the effectiveness of an inexpensive and simple educational
tool which was developed to provide education to vegetable farmers in India.
Methods: After developing a simple educational tool, its effectiveness was assessed by
measuring change in mean scores of knowledge, attitude, practice (KAP) and in-home pesticide
safety behaviour in households of farmers. Pictorial and simple to understand educational tool
was provided and explained to enrolled farmers in intervention villages whereas no additional
information was provided to farmers in control villages. A face to face interview based on a
structured questionnaire was performed to collect quantitative data on knowledge, attitude and
pesticide use and other practices utilised by the vegetable farmers. In-addition, in-home
inspection as a component of pesticide risk behaviours was carried out in both the groups.
Improvement in KAP and in-home inspection scores in intervention group was compared to
control group at 1 and 3 months post intervention, to demonstrate effectiveness of educational
tool.
Results: At baseline, both intervention and control group had low but similar KAP score
(P>.05). At 1 month and 3 months after baseline, the intervention group was associated with
statistically significant increase in knowledge, attitude, and practice scores, as well as significant
increase in in-home inspection scores in intervention group.
Conclusion and discussion: We found that a simple, affordable and self-explanatory pictorial
educational tool is not only effective in providing knowledge to farmers about safe use of
pesticides but also has short to long term impact on improving behaviour for safe use of
pesticide, which can help reduce health impact in the community. |
