Use of an interactive multimedia e-book to improve nursing students'' sexual harassment prevention knowledge, prevention strategies, coping behavior, and learning motivation: A randomized controlled study

Background: Nursing essentially involves working closely with patients both physically and psychologically. Nurses, particularly inexperienced nursing students, are often at great risk of sexual harassment. Objectives: To evaluate the effects of a clinical-based sexual harassment prevention e-book on nursing students' knowledge, prevention strategies, coping behaviors, and learning motivation. Design: A randomized, controlled, experimental study. Setting: Nursing Department at a private university in Taiwan. Participants: Senior nursing students who had finished the required professional internship or were undergoing community nursing or psychiatric nursing internship. Methods: Participants were randomly allocated to intervention (e-book, n = 33) and control (video and brochure, n = 33) groups. They were asked to complete a structured questionnaire before, after, and 2 weeks after the intervention to evaluate their sexual harassment knowledge, prevention strategies, coping behaviors, and learning motivation. Results: In the posttest, the e-book group scored significantly higher in the sexual harassment prevention knowledge (p < .05), sexual harassment prevention strategy (p < .01), and ARCS motivation (p < .001) subscales than the control group, but not in the coping behavior subscale. In terms of group and time effects, knowledge, coping behavior, prevention strategy, and motivation scores were all significantly different in the first posttest (p < .001). In the second posttest, coping behavior and ARCS motivation scores remained significantly different (p < .01). Conclusion: The interactive multimedia e-book effectively improved the sexual harassment prevention knowledge and competence of nursing students. This method can be employed as a supplementary material in nursing education, internship guidance, and nursing on-the-job education.