RNRCTWomen's health nursing (Seoul, Korea)2025

Effect of a digital sexual violence prevention education program on digital sexual violence prevention knowledge, self-protection behavior, and digital citizenship among fifth-grade children: a quasi-experimental study.

Miae Oh, Sukhee Ahn

PMID 41531406

WHAT IT FOUND

Fifth-grade students who received four health education sessions about digital sexual violence scored higher on prevention knowledge and confidence to act as bystanders than controls.

Self-protection behavior was not shown to improve compared with controls.

Key findings

01After the program, students who received the education scored 6.81 for digital sexual violence prevention knowledge, compared with 6.10 in the control group, and this difference was significant.

02Self-protection behavior scores were 2.92 in the experimental group and 2.75 in the control group, and this difference was not significant.

03Only the bystander self-efficacy subdomain of digital citizenship was significantly higher in the experimental group, at 16.59 versus 15.20 in controls.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs

Read the rest of this summary

You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.

Already have one?

What it does not show

The study included 47 fifth-grade students from one elementary school, so results may not apply to other schools or ages. Students receiving special education who had difficulty understanding content or completing surveys were excluded. Both groups were in the same grade and nearby classes, so students may have shared what they learned. This weakens the comparison. Outcomes were measured immediately after four weeks. The study does not show whether knowledge or bystander confidence led to real protective behavior later. Self-protection scores were already near the top of the 3-point scale before the program. This ceiling effect made it hard to detect improvement. The design was a nonequivalent control-group study with convenience sampling.

Declared interests

The authors declared no conflict of interest and reported no funding.

The easy way to misread this

Do not conclude that the program made children behave more safely online. The self-protection behavior scores were not significantly different between groups, and follow-up was only immediate.

Read it on PubMed →


The study

Participants
47 fifth-grade students (27 experimental, 20 control)
Certainty of evidence
Moderate

More in paediatrics & neonatal

Browse

Cite

Miae Oh, Sukhee Ahn Effect of a digital sexual violence prevention education program on digital sexual violence prevention knowledge, self-protection behavior, and digital citizenship among fifth-grade children: a quasi-experimental study. Women's health nursing (Seoul, Korea). 2025.

Read the original