Children who enter adolescence are very curious about sex, and how they look at sex in adolescence determines their lifelong sexual attitude. As people's sexual knowledge, attitude and behavior start to develop in childhood, elementary schoolers shoul...
Children who enter adolescence are very curious about sex, and how they look at sex in adolescence determines their lifelong sexual attitude. As people's sexual knowledge, attitude and behavior start to develop in childhood, elementary schoolers should be educated to have the right knowledge about sex and cope with sexual problems properly.
The object of school sex education is providing scientific knowledge for children to be aware of the physical and psychological characteristics of man and woman and their social roles, build the right values, and be responsible for their own sexual behaviors, and they should be helped to have a positive self-concept and lead an amicable social life.
The purpose of this study was to examine how a sex-education group counseling program, which was designed to cater to children's interest and stir up their energetic participation, affected their sexual knowledge and attitude. And it's also meant to lay the foundation for offering more successful school sex education.
The subjects in this study were 64 students in two different fifth-year classes of W elementary school in the city of Chuncheon. The two classes were respectively selected as an experimental group and a control group, which included 16 boy sand 16 girls each.
The experiment was conducted from the third week of November through the second week of December, 2004. The experimental group participated in a group-counseling program in 10 sessions for five weeks, twice a week, 50 minutes each. Three pairs of volunteer counselors who provided sexual counseling after completing professional courses in that field were utilized as assistants to ensure the smooth progress of the group counseling.
The instrument used to assess the sexual knowledge of the elementary schoolers was an 20-item inventory prepared by this researcher based on what's used in earlier studies by Kim Seu-mi(1997), Yang Sun-ok(2002), Lee Seong-hye(2002), Park Gyeong-seon(2002) and Kim Suk-hui(2003). This inventory dealt with physical development, sexual health, psychological development, understanding of interpersonal relations, social environments, and consciousness of gender equality.
The other instrument used to assess their sexual attitude was an 20- item inventory prepared by this researcher based on what's utilized in earlier studies by Kim Seu-mi(1997), Yang Sun-ok(2002), Lee Seong-hye (2002), Kim Suk-hui(2003) and Lee In-sil(2004). This instrument covered the development of sexual psychology, marriage, family, interpersonal relationship, social environments and awareness of gender equality.
The collected data were analyzed with SPSS program, and statistical data on real number and percentage were obtained. Besides, t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient were employed.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
irst, Hypothesis 1, which an experimental group who participates in the sex-education group counseling program might score higher in sex knowledge than a control group who doesn't, was accepted. The experimental group that took part in the sex-education program got 7.43 higher scores in sexual knowledge, as their marks increased from 6.75 to 14.18. The control group that didn't participate in the sex-education program showed a 0.47 increase from 8.71 to 9.18. When t-test was conducted to track intragroup gaps, the experimental group that was exposed to the sex-education program made a more statistically significant progress in sex knowledge than the control group that wasn't (t=-6.70, p=.000).
Second, Hypothesis 2, which the experimental group that takes part in the sex-education group counseling program might score better than the control group that doesn't in sexual attitude, was accepted. The collective average of the experimental group was 5.31 up, from 10.75 to 16.06, and that of the control group was 0.44 up, from 12.06 to 1.50. When t-test was employed to see intragroup gaps, the experimental group got statistically significant higher scores than the control group (t=-4.19, p=.000).
Third, Hypothesis 3, which there might be a significant correlation between sex knowledge and sexual attitude, was accepted. As a result of analyzing the relationship of sex knowledge to sexual attitude in the two groups, the two factors had a significantly positive correlation to each other in both pretest(t=.531, p=.000) and posttest(t=.694, p=.000).
The finding of the study illustrated that those who had more knowledge on sex took a more positive, opener sexual attitude, and that in order to inspire students with a positive sexual attitude, they should be educated to have a good knowledge on that.