content analysis of health information components in school textbooks

introduction: since health is one of god's great bounties bestowed on human, he should attempt to keep it especially in today's machine life. therefore, people have to be educated before any kind of disease occurs. this study aimed to analyze the contents of secondary school textbooks regarding health education indices such as skin health, oral hygiene, nutrition, sports and physical activity, diseases (including hiv/aids), and smoking and drug abuse. methods: this descriptive study used shannon entropy for content analysis. the analysis unit included pages of secondary school books (including texts, questions, exercises, and pictures) during the educational year of 2008-2009. totally, 15 books containing 1915 pages were included. in order to confirm the reliability, available resources were used to select health information- and education-related components and indexes. the extracted indices and components were then studied by a number of physicians, health experts and managers and their viewpoints were considered to improve the research. results: the highest and lowest frequency and importance coefficient were related to sports and physical activity (14 cases) and smoking and drug abuse (no cases were found), respectively. conclusion: curriculum is the basic approach and strategy in health promotion among students. hence, the school books should emphasize essential health-related education. however, unfortunately, some aspects of health information have been overlooked in secondary school textbooks.