Intervention of Oral Health Education in Comprehensive High School Students

• Main Authors: Hsiao-Lian Hsu, 徐孝蓮
• Other Authors: 楊奕馨
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/88887220760569004296

碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 口腔衛生科學研究所碩士在職專班 === 94 === Background: Previous oral health studies of adolescents indicated that they might not have enough oral health knowledge, proper attitudes and adequate behaviors. In fact, the prevalence rates of dental caries in senior high school students were rather high. Majority of the current oral health teaching materials were for preschool- or elementary school-aged children. Oral health teaching materials for adolescents, especially, senior high school students are not sufficient apparently. Study objective: A course of oral health education material for teaching senior high school students was designed for this study. The main purposes of this study were as follows. 1. To discuss the impact of the education intervention on the oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. 2. To evaluate related factors that influence the variation between the pre-test and post-test of the hygiene education intervention. 3. To explore the impact of education intervention on tooth-cleaning intention by using the stages of change behavior that was designed in the trans-theoretical model. 4. To evaluate adolescent appraisal of the intervention program. Methods: There were 239 first grade students of a general high school in Kaohsiung County recruited for this study. Students were divided into the experimental group (85 students) and the control group (154 students). They received an oral checkup and the pre-test of the questionnaire simultaneously. Eight 50-minute classes were conducted every two weeks for the experimental group. One post-test of the questionnaire was given two weeks after the education intervention. In addition, the post-test of the checkup and the post-test of the questionnaire were provided four weeks later after the education intervention. The study lasted for ten months. The statistical analysis was conducted by JMP512 for descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, chi-square test, and regression analysis. Results: The main theme of this study was to evaluate the applicability of this education program by investigating the impact of the intervention on adolescent oral hygiene knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. The study results revealed that the experimental group had an increase of 7.24±0.49 points on knowledge and 0.76±0.17 points on attitudes after the education intervention was provided. This indicated that there was significant statistical difference between the two groups. Moreover, the variation of knowledge (1.99±0.47) in the experimental group was still different from that in the control group during the post-test significantly. However, the variation of the tooth-cleaning behaviors and the plaque index of the two groups did not differ significantly. Regression analysis discovered that the privacy of tooth cleaning environment was an important factor affecting both boys’ and girls’ willingness to clean teeth. For the variation of adolescents’ tooth-cleaning behavior contemplation, 60% of students in the experimental group improved from stage “contemplation” during the pre-test to stages “action” and “maintenance” during the post-test. This proportion was also significantly higher than that (32%) of the control group. In addition, 46% of students of the experimental group improved from stage “action” to stages “action” and “maintenance”. This proportion was significantly higher than that (15%) of the control group. Students of the experimental group confirmed the positive effect of the education intervention. They gave the highest appraisal for teachers’ teaching attitudes; this indicated that establishing good interaction relationships is most essential in providing education intervention to adolescents. Conclusions: Applying this oral health education program in adolescents can improve the health knowledge and attitudes of adolescents. Lacking an independent environment for tooth cleaning reduce adolescent willingness to clean teeth. The effect on girls in learning health knowledge was higher than that of boys. It is apparent that the activities of oral health teaching are able to rectify incorrect dental health concepts. It is recommended that the activities of oral hygiene teaching should be included in the curriculum with more course hours and more practice for tooth-cleaning skills added. Besides this, an independent space for tooth cleaning is expected in planning the space inside the school buildings in order to avoid interference between students during tooth cleaning as well as strengthening adolescent willingness to clean teeth. Keywords: adolescent, oral hygiene education, stages of change of behavio