Pesticide Safety e-book development for children living in rubber farming areas, southern of Thailand

The study objectives were: (1) to develop and design an Electronic book (E-book) for improving knowledge addressed pesticide safety behaviors among children living in rubber farming areas; and (2) to evaluate their knowledge and perceptions on pesticide use. This study was conducted in the Khogyang community, Trang province, Thailand between September 2013 and March 2014. E-book´s content validity was verified by four specialists and experts on environmental health, community health, behavior and social sciences, and health education. One hundred and forty-four rubber farmer´s children from the Khogyang and Namcha schools were randomly recruited. The research procedure was divided into two phases: (1) knowledge and related concern evaluation phase and; (2) E-book design and development phase. The results revealed that their knowledge on pesticide use was observed at moderate level (13.20 + 3.95, total score = 21). The level of overall perceptions regarding pesticide use was observed at moderate level (3.49+0.51, total score = 5.00). The mean scores of perceived susceptibility, seriousness, barriers, and benefits of pesticide use were 3.78 + 0.72, 3.13 + 0.66, 3.21+0.58 and 3.85+1.01, respectively. Positive statistically significant correlation between knowledge and perception score was found (r = 0.613, p-value <; 0.001). The E-book contents were revised appropriately according recommendations from the experts. Electronic version had been performed by specialist and expert on IT. Features of Pesticide Safety e-book were presented: web-based, platform agnostic, group ware tool, easy drag and drop interface, pedagogically oriented E-book design. The contents in the E-book focused on basic guidelines for protecting rubber farmers and their families from pesticide risk behaviors. Simplified language styles, fonts, layouts, designs, and pictures illustrated were developed and designed to provide understandable, concise pesticide safety information for rubber farme- ´s children and their families. Some parts of drawing pictures in the E-book were designed using ideas from the participants. These served as a guideline for introducing the idea of community involvement in health education related to pesticide safety behaviors. The Khogyang community gained knowledge and took the necessary steps to incorporate pesticide safety recommendations for their families.