Knowledge, Attitude, and Performance of Secondary School Female Students toward Skin Cancer and Sun Protection Behaviors in Yazd

Skin cancer is regarded as the most common cancer in most countries, whose most important risk factor is exposure to sunlight. Since prevention programs demand to be held in this regard in childhood and adolescence, this study aimed to determine the Knowledge, attitude, and performance of secondary school female students towards skin cancer and sun protection behaviors in Yazd.
This cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted on 513 secondary school female students, who were selected using a stratified sampling method. The data collection tool was a questionnaire that its reliability was confirmed in Mazloomy's study via Cronbach alpha (0.81). Moreover, the study data were analyzed by descriptive statistics as well as analytic statistics using SPSS software (ver. 11.5).
Mean age of participants was 15/88±1/04 years. Mean and standard deviation scores of knowledge, attitude, performance were reported 12.19 ± 5.44 (total core= 37), 18.98 ± 2.26 (total core= 24) and 7.47 ± 2/51 (total core= 16) respectively. Using sunscreen (71.5%) was introduced as the most prevalent sun protection behavior. A significant correlation was observed between knowledge and attitude (r= 0.350, p=0.000), as well as performance(r= 0.264, p=0.000) and age (r= 0.134, p=0.010).
As the study findings revealed, lack of knowledge as well as undesirable sun protection behaviors except for using sunscreen supported the need to conduct school-based educational intervention.