Vol. 5, Issue 10 (2016)

Author(s):
Jyoti Joshi and Dr. Sunita Agarwal

Abstract:
Children are the most vulnerable segment of the population to hygiene and sanitation concerned health hazards and consequently are affected the most The poor health and lack of sanitation facilities are important underlying factors for low school enrolment, absenteeism, poor classroom performance, and early school dropouts. In the nutshell, India is lacking sanitation and hygiene in its rural schools setup which affects the performance of children negatively and increases the chances of acquiring many diseases. Therefore, the present study is planned to assess the current situation of knowledge and practices regarding hygiene in school students of rural Bikaner. In the present study, 1280 students were selected from 32 schools, which comprised of 16 government and 16 private schools. These students were selected by the process of multistage sampling. A self-administered close ended questionnaire was prepared for the study. To find whether there exists a significant difference between knowledge and practice regarding hygiene, we conducted test of proportions where the same set of respondents were asked for two different aspects and the result was analyzed through z-test statistic. For knowledge of government school students regarding personal hygiene, water and food hygiene were (87.6%), (89.1%), (89.1%) and practices level were (63.3%), (53.8%), (52.2%) and the knowledge level of private student’s were (92.6%), (91.4%), 94.6%) and practices level were(75.5%), (71.2%), (71.4%). The Z-value was found (-3.00) for personal hygiene and water hygiene Z-Calculated (1.41) is lower than the Z-critical (1.96). This implies that there is no significant level of difference found in the knowledge level of Water Hygiene amongst the two school groups. Z-calculated (3.57) is higher than the Z-critical (1.96). This leads to the conclusion of rejecting the null hypothesis regarding practice level amongst both the group of students with respect to these parameters.