TITLE:
Subject-Specific Humor as a Creative Method to Communicate Health Knowledge
AUTHORS:
Marisa Holzapfel, Karin Stachelscheid, Maik Walpuski, Stefan Rumann
KEYWORDS:
Humor, Health Education, Elementary and Secondary School, Self-Learning, Sun Protection
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.10 No.8,
August
12,
2019
ABSTRACT: As part of health promotion, the aim of health education is to teach students health knowledge as a basis for more health-conscious behavior. It can enable them to make educated decisions on how to prevent dangers to their health. Given the factthat skin cancer rate rises, we chose sun protection as our topic.Since it is already known that measures that work with deterrent exampleshave a moralizing effect and are less effective, a creative methodcould be a promising alternative. Implementinghumor into learning material might be an effective approach. That is why we developed learning material for health education with a specific type of humor called “subject-specific humor (SSH)” in this study.Cartoons with SSH were combined with complementary text to form new self-learning material which was used to teach students aged 9 to 13. The aim of the study was to find out more about the possibility of teaching health education by using SSH in elementary and secondary school.An intervention study in control group design was carried out using a pre-post-follow-uptest design. In two groups,the students were taught with the newlydeveloped self-learning material with or without SSH. Central point of the evaluation was the change of performance regarding the three variables contentknowledge, interest and health behavior. In this article, we focus on the learninggainsince health knowledge is the basis for health-conscious behavior.All tested students achieved significant learning gains.Unexpectedly, there wasno significant difference between the intervention group and the controlgroup.