Background & Aim: The parents and especially the mothers’ awareness play a major role in education of healthy sexual behaviors in pre-school children. The present study aims to compare the effects of sex education with two methods of educational pack and group discussion on awareness in mothers of pre-school children in the selected kindergartens of Alborz Province center.
Methods: This is a semi-experimental study comparing the before and after education situations in three groups including the educational pack, group discussion and control group. The population includes the mothers with a 3-6-year-old child in the selected kindergartens of Alborz Province center (2019-2020), among them, 99 people were selected by stratified random sampling method. After dropping 9 people, the number of samples reached 90 people who were divided into three groups of 30 people. Data collection was done with using a questionnaire of mothers' awareness of sexual education of pre-school children of Mobaradi, et al. For experimental data analysis, descriptive (frequency, mean and standard deviation) and inferential (paired t-tests and chi-square) statistics were used in SPSS software version 19.
Results: In educational pack group, the mothers’ average awareness was reported 28.63 before the education and 30.87 after the education and in group discussion; the mean scores were 30.63 and 34.17 respectively. The comparison of the groups showed that in discussion group, awareness increased more than educational pack group and control. The educational pack group had more awareness than the control group (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The results of this research showed that group discussion education is more effective than the educational pack in order to increase the awareness of mothers of pre-school children in the field of sex education. Therefore, in child sex education, it is recommended to use these methods, especially the group discussion method.