Epidemiological study of prevalence of pediculosis and its related factors using the health belief model in elementary school students in Khorramshahr city of Iran

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of pediculosis and its related factors in elementary students in the city of Khorramshahr. A cross-sectional, descriptive-analytic that carried out on 170 female students in Khorramshahr city on March and April of 2015. 22 subjects (12.9%) got infestation of head lice in the past three months and 148 (87.1%) could not experienced infestation of louse. The mean score of awareness between the studied sample was 48.41 ± 3.12 with maximum value 36 and minimum value 4. Regression analysis was used to predict behaviours. Results showed that only the awareness variable was behaviour predictive (p = 0.014). There was no significant relationship between predictive behaviours and demographic variables. The results of this study showed that the knowledge is the only predictive variable of behaviour that has significantly relationship with preventive behaviour of pediculosis. As a result, elementary school students can be protected by increasing awareness of preventive behaviours and the prevalence of pediculosis can be reduced.