Earthquake disaster preparedness training programme for hearing- impaired children: a randomized quasi-experimental trial

Background: An earthquake can cause enormous economic losses and casualties. When an earthquake occurs, vulnerable people such as the hearing-impaired have great difficulty in re-ceiving warning signals and performing self-rescue. Disaster preparedness training has been shown to be effective in disaster prevention and preparedness in previous studies in the general population, such as in normal children. However, there have been no studies of disaster pre-paredness training in hearing-impaired children.Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an earthquake disaster preparedness training pro-gramme for hearing-impaired children in special education schools so as to improve their knowl-edge, skills and attitudes towards earthquake preparedness.Design: A randomized controlled quasi-experimental design was applied.Methods: A total of 104 hearing-impaired children from several special education schools in earthquake-prone areas of Sichuan Province, China, were randomly divided into intervention (n = 55) and control (n = 49) groups. The control group received only a self-study earthquake disaster preparedness pamphlet, while the intervention group received an earthquake disaster preparedness training programme in addition to the pamphlet. The children were evaluated at pre-test (T0, before the intervention), post-test 1 (T1, immediately after the intervention) and post-test 2 (T2, two months after the intervention), using (1) a general information question-naire, (2) a questionnaire on earthquake preparedness knowledge, attitude and behaviour among hearing-impaired children, and (3) a bandaging and haemostasis and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performance test form (simplified version).Results: The questionnaire scores for the earthquake preparedness of the hearing-impaired children were low. At pre-test (T0), the total questionnaire scores of the intervention and control group were 85.49 +/- 12.13 and 86.53 +/- 10.99, respectively, bandaging and haemostasis scores were 53.29 +/- 5.63 and 51.16 +/- 7.63, respectively, and CPR scores were 51.29 +/- 6.60 and 48.29 +/- 9.89, respectively. At post-test 1 (T1), the total question-naire scores of the intervention and control group were 100.26 +/- 15.15 and 89.12 +/- 12.69, respectively, bandaging and haemostasis scores were 79.56 +/- 6.50 and 54.92 +/- 7.41, respectively, and CPR scores were 75.93 +/- 9.07 and 51.39 +/- 9.70, respec-tively. At post-test 2 (T2), the total questionnaire scores of the intervention and control group were 92.45 +/- 14.40 and 91.14 +/- 14.24, respectively, bandaging and haemostasis scores were 72.07 +/- 7.56 and 51.18 +/- 6.88, respectively, and CPR scores were 68.80 +/- 8.98 and 50.37 +/- 8.08, respectively. After three time points, the analysis showed that the interaction between groups and time for total questionnaire score and the knowl-edge and behaviour dimension scores were statistically significant (P < 0.001), however, the interaction between groups and time for attitude dimension scores was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). In addition, the interaction between groups and time for bandaging and haemostasis and CPR scores was statistically significant (P < 0.001). The effect size of the total of questionnaire, bandaging and haemostasis and CPR were 4.70, 5.99 and 6.95, re-spectively.Conclusions: This study demonstrated that it is feasible and effective to deliver an earthquake dis-aster preparedness training programme for hearing-impaired children. The findings can provide a basis and reference for similar or more in-depth research on interventions for hearing-impaired children in the future. The content and form of the intervention can inform the design or im-provement of disaster education curricula in special education schools.