Methods: With a randomized controlled trial, 100 high school girl students in one high school were randomly assigned into experimental group and control group. Menstruation self-management program as study intervention was consisted of total 4 hours education program with 1 hour class for 4 times. Education program consisted of 4 classes: understanding of menstruation, coping to menstrual discomfort (diet, physical activity, stress management, making hot red bean bag, practice for pelvic rocking exercise and yoga), menstruation hygiene (bathing, hand washing, pad change), and genito-urinary hygiene (normal vs abnormal vaginal discharge, washing and clothing, no vaginal irrigation, no use for deordorant,). Control group only received the first class education. Measurement tools included 20-item menstrual knowledge scale developed by YH Lee (2010) and 12-item women’s genito-urinary hygiene scale modified from original instrument developed by Czerwinski (2000). After IRB approval, the first researcher explained study purpose and procedure to possible subjects and received parent and studnet's written consent. Pretest and post-test questionnaires were administered in both groups. Demographic and menstruation-related information was also collected for study purpose. Data were anlayzed with SPSS (Ver 22.0) for descriptive statistics, independent t-test, and ANOVA. Significance was set as alpha =.05.
Results: All study participants were 10th grade girl students. All of them used disposal menstrual pad (100%), and used panty liner (50%), cotten menstrual pad (22%), and tampon (2%) additionally. Students who had ever received education for mensturation self-management was 75%, but 22% of them performed vaginal doche. Test of homogeneity showed no group difference in pretest scores between two groups. The results showed that the experimental group received menstruation self - management education program had higher score in menstrual knowledge (17.86±2.48) than that in control group (11.76±2.26) (t=1.37, p<.001). Students who received menstruation self-management education program had higher score in perceived self-management behavior (62.7±4.15) than that in students of control group (53.98±5.11) (t=11.33, p<.001).
Conclusion: These results suggest that menstruation self-management education program is effective in improving knowledge of menstruation and enhancing self-management behavior among high school girl student. It may be useful for school health teachers to utilize this education program when planning health education.