Design and Evaluation of a Child Abuse Web-Based Application for Parent Education

Abstract

Introduction: One of the most important threats for children is child abuse and despite the scientific progress of societies, the number of reports on social harm to children continues to increase. Web-based applications can effectively improve educational patterns, reduce and prevent the occurrence of various injuries to children and ultimately reduce and prevent the difficult and exhausting consequences of all types of child abuse in childhood and adulthood. Therefore, this study aimed to design and evaluation of a child Abuse web-based application for parent education. Methods: This study is an applied-developmental study. To determine the information needs of the application by searching in library sources, a questionnaire to determine the educational content and a checklist to determine the functional capabilities were designed and provided to the clinical specialists and health information management for the survey. then, basedon the approved information elements and capabilities, the web-based application was designed .The usability of the designed program was evaluated with the participation of 30 users. Results: Specialists recognized all data elements and capabilities are essential. Application capabilities were such as concepts of child abuse, prevention and treatment strategies, parenting skills, childrens behavioral disorders, child abuse laws and interaction with clinical specialists. From the users point of view, the result of the web-based application usability evaluation was evaluated at a good level equal to an average of 7.6 out of a total of 9 points. Conclusion: Various applications have been developed with the aim of educating patients or caregivers. The special nature of the phenomenon of child abuse compared to other diseases makes it clear the importance of paying special attention to design and create appropriate solutions to provide education and increase parents' knowledge with the aim of preventing child abuse. The usability of the web-based application was satisfactory to users in various of overall functionality, display, terminology, learning ability and overall application capability. Keywords: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Neglect, Web-Based application. Parent training