The Effect of SMS-Based Education on Mothers Sleep Knowledge and Sleep Quantity among Elementary School Students: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Lack of enough sleep reduces the quality of their life and endangers their physical, mental, social and emotional health. Therefore this study was conducted in Tabriz aimed at investigating the effect of tele-education of mothers by Short Message Service(SMS) of mobile phone on motherʾs sleep knowledge and sleep quantity of children aged 7-12. Methods: The students of 13 elementary schools in Tabriz, who lacked enough sleep, were investigated then randomly allocated into 2 groups: intervention and control. Pretest was done in both groups on motherʾs sleep knowledge and children’s sleep quantity. Afterwards, education of mothers in intervention group was done by SMS for 1 month. One week and also three months after ending the intervention, the posttest was done. The data was analyzed using SPSS Ver. 13 and significance level of p> 0.05. Findings: The difference between the mean sleep knowledge scores of mothers before and after the intervention was higher in the intervention group compared to the control group and this difference between before and one week after with 5.98 unit change and confidence intervals 3.56 to 8.41 (p<0.001) and between before and three months after with 4.09 unit change and confidence intervals 1.44 to 6.74 (p<0.003) was statistically significant. The mean of differences between students’ sleep duration before and after the intervention was higher in intervention group compared to control group and the difference between the sleep duration before intervention and 3 months later with the mean of 29.14 unit change and confidence intervals 12. 59 to 45.69 was statistically significant (P˂0.001). Discussion and Conclusion: Education of mothers by Short Message Service (SMS) of mobile phone can be introduced as an effective way of education for improving Motherʾs sleep knowledge and school-age children’s sleep quantity.