The Effect of Educational Intervention on Parental Knowledge Regarding Immunization

Introduction: Vaccination has been proven to control and eradicate infectious disease. However, immunization status among children can be affected by parental knowledge. Hence, we aimed to evaluate the impact of educational intervention as well as predictors of baseline knowledge regarding immunization among parents. Methodology: This was a pre-post intervention study conducted from January to August 2017. The inclusion criteria were all parents with children aged 12 years old and below receiving treatment in Raja Perempuan Zainab II Hospital, Kelantan, Malaysia. Subjects were recruited at outpatient pharmacy counter when they came to refill their prescriptions. Later, they were invited to watch an educational animated movie which was adapted from previous literature. They were required to complete a selfadministered questionnaire before and after the intervention. Results: A total of 67 parents were recruited in this study. Most of them were Malay (86.6%, n=58) mothers (52.2%, n=35) with mean(SD) age of 36.21(6.66) years old. The number of parents who answered correctly were increased for all 10 items following educational intervention with 9 of them were significant (p<0.05). There was a significant improvement of mean(SD) knowledge scores when compared between pre- and post-test [5.84(2.26) vs 8.48(1.50), 95% CI (-3.22, -2.06), p<0.001]. Four (4) variables were significant as predictors of baseline knowledge scores; gender, number of pre-school children, education level and exposure to information scores (p<0.05). Conclusion: Educational intervention was effective in increasing parental knowledge. Further studies are warranted to identify other predictors of parental knowledge regarding immunization