Abstract:
The incidence of myopia was higher in children, especially elementary schools. Myopia is influenced by heredity (genetic) and the habit nearwork activity, such as reading. So the knowledge and attitudes about healthy reading techniques (position reading, distance reading, the old reading and lighting) needed as a way of preventing myopia since early. The aim of this study was to determined the influence of counseling on knowledge and attitude of the students about healthy reading techniques in order to prevent myopia in 051 elementary school Pekanbaru 2012. This study was pre experiment design with one group pretest-posttest. The samples were 184 students. The instrument of this study were questionnaire that is filled twice, before and after counseling. Analysis of the results were carried out using Wilcoxon test. The results showed knowledge of students before counseling were good category (66,3%) and low (33,7%). After counseling, the knowledge of students became good (82,6%) and low (17,4%). The attitude of students before counseling were positive category (41,3%), neutral (12,5%) and negative (46,2%). After counseling, the attitude of students became positive (56,6%), neutral (10,3%) and negative (33,2%). The results showed that there was difference of knowledge after counseling with the value of p=0,000 and there was difference of attitude after counseling with the value of p=0,000. The conclusion was the counseling influences on improving students knowledge and attitude about healthy reading techniques .
