A Study on the Evaluation Instruments and Knowledge of the New Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act Using the 2011 Report on the Survey of General Tobacco Prevention Knowledge Test in ChangHua County of Taiwan

[[abstract]]A Study on the Evaluation Instruments and Knowledge of the New Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act Using the 2011 Report on the Survey of General Tobacco Prevention Knowledge Test in ChangHua County of TaiwanAbstractObjective: To develop a evaluation instrument for exploring the general knowledge of senior high school students towards the new Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act of 2009.Method: A evaluation instrument with 48 questions was developed based on the new Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act of 2009. A survey was conducted to investigate the general knowledge of tobacco hazard prevention among 9666 participants from senior high school students via World Wide Web. The validation of test items was analyzed in term of item difficulty level, item discrimination and distractor power of distractor options using SPSS 12.0.Result:According to the result, the average score of the subjects is 72.96?17.17 with 95% confidence interval, revealing that the general knowledge of the subjects towards the new Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act of 2009 covers estimate 70% of the test items. Among the sections of the questionnaire, the subjects gained higher score on smoking forbidden area related questions while they gained lower score on questions related to the health and fine regulation caution for tobacco product packaging. There were 11 questions were identified with low difficulty level and item discrimination while one question was identified with weak distractor power. 53% of the questions in smoking forbidden area section were identified with low difficulty level. 80% of the questions in fine regulation section were identified with high item discrimination.Conclusion:According to the result of this study, the following suggestions are proposed to achieve more effective tobacco hazards prevention:1. To modify the smoking forbidden area related questions to increase the difficulty level.2. The government should focus on the fine regulation knowledge for future policy.3. More education regarding to the fine regulation knowledge should be provided for senior high school students