A Study Of Survey And Intervention On Environmental Protection Awareness In A Higher Vocational College

PurposeTo learn the knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) status of college students related to environmental protection in a vocational college in Yancheng city, Jiangsu Province; to analyze the main factors affecting environmental protection knowledge, attitudes and practice of vocational college students; to discuss environmental protection education intervention methods; to research the means to improve environmental protection knowledge, attitudes and practice levels of vocational college students. And to evaluate the effect of environmental protection education and intervention, thus providing scientific evidence for carrying out environmental protection education and doing research on environmental protection behaviors in the vocational college students; and further improve the level of all kinds of people’s environmental protection knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.MethodsUsing the environmental protection knowledge, attitude and practice questionnaire for vocational students, which based on the reference to the relevant domestic and international research and consulted experts in this field, this study investigated the knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) status related to environmental protection of 770 college students in a vocational college in Yancheng city, and divided these students into Experimental Group and Control Group according to the method of stratified cluster sampling. The experimental group had received different forms of environmental protection education for 3 months, and thus compared the changes of the knowledge, attitudes and practice on environmental protection of the vocational students before and after intervention. The measurement data of normal distribution and variance all used t-test; Count Data used chi-square test; ranked data used rank sum test.ResultsThis study investigated 770 vocational students, including 232 boys, accounting for 30.13%, and 538 girls, accounting for 69.87%; and among them 238 from the Imaging Department, accouting for 30.91%,99 from the Nursing Department, accounting for 12.86%,211 from the Medical Department, accounting for27.40%and 222 form the Pharmacy Department, accounting for 28.83%. Before intervention, the scores of environmental protection knowledge of the Experimental Group and the Control Group were 27.69 and 25.74; attitude scores were 28.06 and 29.21; behavior scores were followed 22.75 and 23.66; the total KAP scores were 78.51 and 78.61; analysis of variance showed that the environmental protection knowledge were different (P<0.05), attitudes, behavior and total scores were no difference of the two groups before intervention (P> 0.05). After intervention, the scores of environmental protection knowledge of the Environmental Group and the Control Group were 95.12 and 33.27; attitude scores were 75.70 and 29.04; behavior scores were followed 87.21 and 24.00; the total KAP scores were 258.03 and 86.31; analysis of variance showed that the environmental protection knowledge, attitudes, behavior and total scores were different of the two groups after intervention (P< 0.05). Factors affecting the result of students’knowledge, attitude, behavior and total scores intervention are groups, students’sources of urban and rural areas, father’s degree of education and mother’s degree of education. The correlation coefficient of environmental protection knowledge and attitude, knowledge and behavior, attitude and behavior are 0.864,0.867,0.85.73.38% of the vocational students’ environmental protection knowledge derived from radio and television networks,53.64% from books and magazines,46.89% from relatives and friends,38.05% from lectures and 12.34% from other resources.ConclusionsThe vocational students’ knowledge of environmental protection is a bit deficient, they have good intentions to protect the environment and change envrionmetnal pollution, but the faith is not obvious and performances are not active enough; and they haven’t formed good environmental protection attitudes and behaviors, but they are able to learn, and would like to obtain environmental protection and envrionmetnal pollution knowledge through various ways such as radio and television networks. It is able to improve their environmental protection knowledge with the K-A-P theory as the guidance of environmental education, but the effect is not obvious just rely on their active self-study. We should take various kinds of environmental protection education methods to strengthen vocational students’ environmental protection education, and explore effective ways to alter the students’poor environmental protection behaviors. Through the environmental protection knowledge education, higher vocational students’cognitive level on the environmental protection and environmental health improve a lot, their attitudes are more positive and behaviors are more active. They can try their best to prevent water and energy waste, refuse disposable goods and so on. According to the result of this study, we put forward the following suggestions:firstly, increase investment in the campus construction of environmental protection facilities; secondly, enrich the environmental education content and teaching forms; thirdly, pay attention to the persistence and sustainability of environmental education; lastly, constantly innovate and explore other methods to the environmental protection education.