Study area and period: Jeppu Urban Family Welfare Centre, Mangalore, India, from December 2018 to March 2019.
Study design and sampling process: This study used a pre-experimental one group pre-test and post-test design. The purposive sampling technique was used to recruit study participants.
Selection criteria: The inclusion criteria were (i) married women aged 18–45 years (ii) participants who willing to participate voluntarily (iii) read and write Kannada (local language). Exclusion criteria: women undergone hysterectomy and who already have cervical cancer.
Sample size determination: The sample size was estimated with a 13% expected difference in standard deviation taken from a previous study [20], 90% power at 95% confidence interval with an expected 10% dropout, a minimum sample of 42 participants needed. The sample size was increased by 60 to adjust drop out and non-response.
Study variables
Extraneous variable: socio-demographic variables were age, education, occupation, monthly income, and the number of children.
Independent variable: SIM regarding cancer of the cervix and its prevention.
Dependent variable: meaning, risk factors, symptoms, diagnostic test, treatment, and prevention regarding cancer of the cervix.
Data collection tool: It consists of 30 multiple choice questions from the area of meaning (2), risk factors (5), symptoms (5), diagnostic test (4), treatment (4), and preventive aspects of cervical cancer (10). Each correct answer was given a score of‘1’ and each wrong answer was given a ‘0’ score. The total score was 30.
Operational definition
Knowledge: refers to the correct response of the married women to the items in the structured questionnaires. Inadequate knowledge: score (1–10) considered ≤ 50%; moderately adequate knowledge: score (11–20) considered 51–75%; adequate knowledge: score (21–30) considered 76–100%.
Data quality assurance:
Data collector was trained to gather and accumulate data. A pilot study was run in 10% of the samples in the Attavar primary health center at Mangalore.
Conceptual Framework:
Open general system theory based on Ludwig Von Bertalanffy [21, 22] utilized in this study to achieve the effect of SIM. It has five major elements such as input (socio-demographic variables), process (administration of SIM), output (knowledge level), environment (information gained from mass media), and feedback.
Intervention:
SIM is an instructional package with a single conceptual unit of the content on cancer cervix and its prevention, that helps in individualized learning prepared by an investigator by previous references [2, 23, 24]. The study participants understand the meaning, risk factors, symptoms, stages, diagnostic tests, treatment, and prevention mainly focused on vaccination, quit active and passive smoking, avoid exposure to HPV and multiple sexual partners, use condoms, stress reduction, dietary modification, menstrual hygiene, sexual and genital hygiene practice, control use of oral contraceptives, annual gynecological examination, and pap smear examination and visual inspection test with acetic acid when and where the resources available. The study participants systematically go through the module from the beginning to the end with their own time to read this material slowly and carefully within the scheduled time. Women were encouraged to go for self-evaluation given at the end of each unit. Compare their answers with answers provided in the key answers. Duration to complete SIM was one month.
Data processing and analysis:
The data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0 for Windows (SPSS, IBM, USA). Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. The results were analyzed by calculating basic statistics and paired t-test for pre-/post-comparisons of variables and knowledge level.
Ethical considerations
Informed consent was obtained from study participants on a voluntarily and made all the effort to protect their information confidentially.