Abstract
Regular hand washing is a normative lifestyle that is intricately related to the overall well-being of individuals, with special importance among African children. This practice is capable of driving wellbeing. Handwashing is a hygiene protocol that is expected to be inculcated and carried out regularly by everybody. The importance of regular hand washing is enormous because it prevents diarrhea, viral infectious diseases, and other related ailments. This may account for the adoption of regular handwashing as a global approach for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the importance of hand-washing on well-being, the authors adopted an exploratory survey design to assess children's understanding of hand-washing among 300 kindergarten pupils between the ages of 5 and 7 years, with a M = 6 and SD = 2.1. Their genders consisted of boys (145, 45%) and girls (155, 55%). The Hand-washing Pictorial Measure was utilized for assessment, and five questions were asked, namely: (1) What is the child in the picture doing? (2) Why does the child in the picture doing it? (3) How does the child in the picture feel? (4) Have you ever felt that way? (5) What do you think will happen next? The qualitative results showed that 295 participants recognized and described activities in the picture while 3 were ambivalent, and 2 did not recognize it. The quantitative results showed that the scale provided adequate psychometric properties required for assessment. The instrument yielded acceptable psychometric parameters.