Research Information System
Infant and Child Development, vol.35, no.1, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
There is a vital need to conduct age-appropriate programs that are suited to a child's stage of development in which the child, the parents, the school, and the community can work together to prevent sexual abuse. The ‘My Body is Safe’ program for parents and children seeks to provide children with the skills of self-protection. The participants in the study were 70 preschool children of the ages 4–6. The data for the study, which was conducted over the period March–May 2022, were collected with a Parent and Child Information Form and the ‘What If Situation Test’. Following a pretest administered to the experimental and control groups, the experimental group was offered six 20-min ‘My Body is Safe’ program sessions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, a posttest was administered at the end of the sixth session and a follow-up test 2 months later. The mean age of the children participating in the study was 5.58 ± 0.52. It was observed following the program that the scores of the experimental group on all the subscales of the What If Test had increased significantly (p < 0.05). No change was seen in the scores of the control group (p > 0.05). The ‘My Body is Safe’ program is an effective program for developing children's self-protection skills. It is recommended that nurse-led body safety training is included in school curriculums and widely provided to preschool children.