Development of infertility prevention psycho-education program for university students and evaluation of its effectiveness

The main purpose of this study is to develop the infertility prevention psycho-education program aiming the university students and to investigate the effect of it. For this purpose, firstly, the effect of infertility prevention psycho-education program on infertility knowledge, attitudes towards infertility, level of assertiveness and decision making skills of university students are investigated. Then, using semi-structured interview technique, the opinions of the participants in the experimental group about the infertility prevention psycho-education program are determined. In this study, the embedded design, a combination of quantitative and qualitative designs which is also one of the mixed method designs, is used. In order to investigate the effect of the experimental procedure in the quantitative dimension of the study, Solomon four group design (2 experimental, 2 control group) is applied. The research sample consists of 52 university students with 13 participants in each group (Experimental I, Control I, Experimental II ve Control II). Throughout the study, while Experiment I and Experiment II groups are made to practice 10 weeks of infertility prevention psycho-education program, no procedure is applied to Control I and Control II groups. Throughout the study, Infertility Knowledge Test, Attitudes toward Infertility Scale, Voltan-Acar Assertiveness Inventory, Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire, Demographic Information Form and Session Assessment Form are used as data collection tools. Percentage and frequency distributions, 2x2 inter-groups ANOVA, ANCOVA, t-test for independent samples and Stouffer's z-score method are used to analyze the data. In the qualitative dimension of the research, after the sessions have been completed, semi-structured interviews are conducted with the participants in the experimental group. In the analysis of qualitative data, content analysis technique is used. The quantitative findings obtained from the study indicate that the infertility knowledge levels of the participants in the Experiment I and Experiment II groups has increased when compared to the participants in the Control I and Control II groups, and their attitudes towards infertility has improved positively. In addition, it is deduced from the study that infertility prevention psycho-education program does not have a significant effect on the decision-making skills and assertiveness levels of the psycho-education program. The findings obtained from the qualitative dimension of the study indicates that the content of infertility prevention psycho-education program is sufficient; participation to the program increases the knowledge and skills, contributes to socialization; the activities and materials used in the program eases the participation; the duration of the program is sufficient; the group leader has the ability to manage the group effectively. As a result, it is determined that infertility prevention psycho-education program contributes to increase the knowledge of reproductive health and infertility of university students to gain positive attitudes and to improve life skills. Key Words: infertility, psych-education, knowledge level, attitude