Abstract
Background and Aims: Oral health is a vital part of early childhood care. Parents and guardians should have appropriate oral health knowledge and be aware of—and change their perception and attitudes to—their children’s oral health to prevent oral disease. Our aim in this study was to investigate the oral knowledge, attitudes and practices of parents of preschool children.Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a convenient sample of 386 participants from dental and pediatric clinics at Jordan University Hospital. Data were analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive analysis, Mann-Whitney test, and Spearman correlation were used to examine differences in oral health knowledge, attitude and practice of preschool children parents’, and to study the relationship between variables.Results: The mean score for knowledge was 6.1 out of 10 (SD= 2), attitude 14.6 out of 15 (SD= 0.86) and practice 1.6 out of 6 (SD=1.1). In this study, there was a statistically significant difference in the knowledge in relation to parents’ education status (U= 1587.0, p<0.001). Other socio-demographic variables (gender, age, occupational status), did not show any statistical significance. There was a statistically significant positive relationship between knowledge and practice, and between attitude and practice (p˂0.01). Moreover, there was a marginal but statistically significant positive relationship between knowledge and attitude (p=0.05).Conclusions: The level of oral health knowledge and practices of parents of preschool children were low despite having a positive attitude. In addition, there was a gap regarding appropriate practices, which may be attributed to cost, time or commitment. Moreover, there was a statistically significant relation regarding the knowledge and education level of parents. Also, there was a statistically significant relation between knowledge and practice, as well as attitude and practice.
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