Assessing the effect of blended educational intervention on internet addiction preventing among female university students living in Tehran University of Medical Sciences dormitories: Application of Health Belief Model (HBM)

According of high prevalence of internet addiction and its numerous consequences among university students and based on importance of theory based educational intervention implementation on prevention and decreasing behavioral disorders such as internet addiction, current study performed to determine the effect of blended educational intervention based on Health Belief model on internet addiction preventing among female university students living in Tehran University of Medical Sciences dormitories. The present semi-experimental before and after study was performed on 80 female University students with multi stage and cluster sampling in 2012 - 2013.Study instrument included the questionnaires of demographic information and subjects characteristics about internet usage, Young Internet Addiction tool and self-administered questionnaire based on HBM. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were evaluated by content validity and α test. Blended educational intervention about factors and consequences of internet addiction using various educational strategies and materials such as posters. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS software 16 version. Results were considered significant at conventional P<0.05 levels. Response rate was 100 present. Mean of participants’ age was 22±2.6 years. Marital status had significant association with internet addiction (P=0.03). Study results indicated that Mean score of HBM constructs and knowledge had significant relation before and four months after educational intervention (P<0.001). On the other hand, internet addiction prevalence decreased from 26.2 to13.8 (P<0.001). HBM based education was effective on promoting knowledge and performance related to internet addiction prevention. Study results suggest educational intervention program based on health education and promotion theories which can be operative on preventing and decreasing internet addiction.