Comparison of Health Knowledge of Young Adults and their Parents

Abstract

The 1966 edition of the Kilander Health Knowledge test was administered at the beginning of a semester to all 49 students in a freshman health science course and again at the end of that semester. During the semester, the test was administered to the parent of the same sex as the student. A total of 45 sets of responses were obtained on 25 males and 20 females. A significant difference at the .01 level was obtained between the student pre-instruction and post-instruction scores with the use of a subjects × trials analysis of variance. A significant difference at the .01 level was also found between the mean scores of the student pre-instruction responses and the parent responses with a single classification analysis of variance for two population groups. The correlation coefficients of the student pre-instruction scores and the student post-instruction scores to the parent scores were .32 and .27 respectively. These results suggested the conclusion that little if any relationship existed between a parent's knowledge of health and the health knowledge of the progeny. The parents had more knowledge and understanding of health and maintained a superiority in spite of the gains made by the offspring during a period of intense instruction.