Information and communications media environment and information behavior of students at elementary, junior high and high schools in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Abstract

The questionnaire survey on the media environment and information behavior was conducted for about 700 students at 4 primary and secondary schools in Chiang Mai prefecture, Thailand on March 2017. This research is positioned as a preliminary survey to build an educational system for rabies prevention to be conducted in Asia. Rabies is a fatal disease and presents especially in poor and vulnerable locations in the Asia and Africa. Globally, children between the ages of 5-14 years are frequent victims for rabies. This survey was conducted in such environment. Education on dog behavior and bite prevention for children is an essential factor to prevent rabies infection. In order to develop this education, it was necessary to investigate students’ media environment and information behavior before hand. In this survey, the effective responses (N=772) were aged 6 to 19. The popular media devices were smart phone (57.4%), TV (32.4%), and PC (8.3%) in order. The mode of daily media usage was from 1 hour to 3 hours (62.7%). The result of Chi- Square test showed students living in rural area tend to use mass media, on the other hand, students in urban area tend to use Internet media: Males tend to prefer collective communication, on the other hand, females tend to prefer personal communication. In conclusion, it can be said that Internet media is very popular in all over the age of students surveyed regardless of school region, age, gender, and mother tongue.