St. Jude Cancer Education for Children Program: Evaluation at 4th-Grade Level

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cancer

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01185093

SJCECP

Details and patient eligibility

About

The main objectives of the study is to

• Evaluate the knowledge acquisition and retention of 4th-grade students who participate in the St. Jude Cancer Education for Children Program
• To examine the relationship between outcome measures (knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention) with covariates of interest such as self-reported age and gender
• To compare the knowledge scores among schools and identify the schools that may show better improvement than others and factors associated with improvement

Full description

The subjects in this research study will be current 4th-grade students at elementary schools in Memphis, Tennessee who choose to participate in the Program. These participants are not patients of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The Program will be implemented over a three-day period. Each student will attend two presentations and six hands-on activities led by St. Jude faculty and research staff on topics within their expertise, such as cells and cancer, and healthy living. Printed materials to be distributed as part of the St. Jude Cancer Education for Children Program have been developed by a multi-disciplinary team of St. Jude employees and local educators and reviewed by national experts for scientific accuracy and appropriate readability. Material includes three illustrated children's books, a laboratory manual, and activity sheets.

One pre- and two post-tests will be administered by designated school teachers. The tests consist of 10 multiple-choice questions per each of three modules(cells, cancer, and healthy living), validated by a group of experts for readability and content relevance. Knowledge acquisition will be assessed by taking the differences from first post-test to pre-test scores, obtained from 10 questions on each component of the intervention, and using one-sample signed rank test to evaluate the improvement in the knowledge scores. A similar analysis will be undertaken by taking the differences from the 2nd post-evaluation to the 1st post-evaluation for each participant to assess knowledge retention.

Enrollment: 481 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Study participants are not patients of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

• 4th-grade student
• Enrolled at a school participating in the St. Jude Cancer Education for Children Program

Exclusion criteria

• Student chooses not to participate in any or all of the activities and/or testing
• Request by a parent or guardian

Trial design

481 participants in 1 patient group

Fourth grade students

Description:

Each participant will attend two presentations and six hands-on activities led by St. Jude faculty and research staff on topics within their expertise, such as cells and cancer, and healthy living. The pre-test will take place within 7±1 days before the program presentations and before students receive copies of the printed material. Two post-tests will take place. The first post-test will be administered within 7±1 days after the final scheduled program presentation and will be a measure of knowledge acquisition. The second post-test will take place 90±7 days post-intervention and will be a measure of knowledge retention.