European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

A PRE & POST-STUDY TO SHOW THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MAPPING AS A POTENTIAL LEARNING TOOL AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS IN COMMUNITY. - AN INTERVENTION STUDY

Dr. Sunayana G. Kumthekar, Dr. Abhay Srivastava, Dr. Shruti R. Gaikwad, Dr. Gautam B. Sawase,
Dr. Rashmi Priya and Dr. Mohan K. Doibale*

ABSTRACT

Background: Social mapping is one of the most popular tools in PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) so sometimes it is used in place of PRA itself. As the social map is made by local people & not by experts, it is significantly different from other regular maps. Social map tells us about the overview of community structure & socioeconomic situation also household differences by social factors & we also come to know who lives where in community. Objective: 1) To evaluate the feasibility of using social mapping as a teaching tool. 2) To collect useful information which tells us what to study & learn from in the community. Material and methods: A study was a community-based intervention study, which was conducted among sixth-semester medical students in the urban field practice area of medical college to show the effectiveness of social mapping as a teaching tool. A study was done by randomly selecting 30 undergraduate students from the sixth semester. Knowledge regarding the selected study area was tested before and after the intervention, and compared between two groups. Results: Results show that the average pre & post-test of Group A (control group) is not statistically significant compared to Group B (Intervention Group) which shows a highly statistically significant difference. (p-value < 0.000001). Conclusion: Social mapping was found to be an effective way of understanding the infrastructure and social structures in the field or community.

Keywords: Social mapping, Effectiveness, Intervention.