Researching nursery children’s awareness of the need for sun protection: towards a new methodology

Abstract

Describes a small study to evaluate the usefulness of a song tape to promote sun protection messages to children in nursery schools and to find a method of researching young children’s views that could be used with small groups of children which would be simple to administer and analyse, and which would provide reliable data. Finds that the song tape was useful in stimulating work about the skin and the sun in nursery schools, although it was not the only cause of increased awareness of sun protection issues among the children as a result of the study. From the several methods considered, “draw and talk”, in which the children drew pictures in response to a suggestion and then talked to the researcher, proved to be the most successful in eliciting children’s levels of awareness of the need for sun protection. Draw and talk is an illuminative approach which provides quantifiable data and which could be used for development of other curriculum materials or for evaluation of existing programmes for the nursery age group.

Citation

Collins, M., McWhirter, J. and Wetton, N. (1998), "Researching nursery children’s awareness of the need for sun protection: towards a new methodology", Health Education, Vol. 98 No. 4, pp. 125-134. https://doi.org/10.1108/09654289810219240