Validation of coronavirus-2019 phobia scale using preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities in Nigeria: Implication for educational sociologists.

ABSTRACT: Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019, causing significant changes in people's social lives and other human activities. The outbreak halted educational activities throughout the world. The Nigerian experience was unique in that most people were skeptical about the pandemic's existence. This practice contributed to the Nigerian people's fear of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, in Nigeria, there has never been a validated or established Covid-19 phobia scale, necessitating this study.This study was a pure validation study on COVID-19 phobia scale (C19PS). The study area was south-east states and a sample of 386 preschool practitioners in urban and rural communities of South East States, Nigeria participated in the study. The eligibility criteria include being a preschool teacher and demonstrating signs of COVID-19 phobia. The validation of the C19PS was done by subjecting the data gathered to principal axis factoring analysis with varimax rotation. The model fit for the data was tested using root mean square error of approximation and comparative fit index.It was found that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value of .845 for the measure of the adequacy of the sample size. There was also a significant Bartlett's test of sphericity (P < .05). This implies that the correlation matrix for the C19PS is not an identity matrix. It was revealed that C19PS had good overall reliability (α = .896) and model fit (Root mean square error of approximation = .042, comparative fit index = .943) in a sample of Nigerian preschool practitioners.As a result, C19PS was recommended as a trustworthy tool for identifying persons who suffer from COVID-19 phobia.

Improving knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English language speaking children in rural areas through educational digital storytelling.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Previous research efforts have shown the need for improvement of knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English Language speaking children in rural areas. Hence, the study at hand was designed to investigate the effect of using educational digital storytelling intervention to satisfy this need of English Language children in rural areas in Nigeria. METHOD: The study adopted a randomized control design involving a pretest, post-test, and follow-up measures. Eight-four children (n = 84) took part in the study. The HIV Knowledge Questionnaire (HIV-KQ-18) and the Perceived Risk of HIV Scale (PRHS) were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using t test statistics. RESULT: The educational digital storytelling intervention in appreciably improved knowledge and perception of English language children in rural areas who participated in the intervention concerning HIV/AIDS compared with their peers in the no-intervention control group. The improvement in knowledge and perception gained was also maintained throughout the follow-up evaluation period. CONCLUSION: The present study showed that the use of educational digital storytelling could improve knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among English Language speaking children in rural areas. Educational digital storytelling intervention effectively improved knowledge and perception of HIV/AIDS among children in rural areas. In return, we recommend that rural sociologists, counselors, language and communication experts, child educators, and other professionals involved in public health especially, as it concerns children be skilled in the use and application of educational digital storytelling intervention procedures to facilitate the move towards adopting the method in their professional practices.