PRACTICES, ATTITUDES AND AWARENESS OF SUBURBAN ADOLESCENCE SCHOOL CHILDREN TOWARDS ORAL HYGIENE: SCHOOL- BASED SURVEY

Abstract

Background: Oral hygiene is importance in maintaining a good oral health as it may affect the general healthof the body. Adolescence features a stage of significant caries activity for countless individuals. Thus, thepurpose of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice among adolescence suburban schoolchildren towards oral hygiene.Methods: A cross-sectional study in which self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 300 studentsat selected suburban public schools in Selangor based on stratified sampling. The questionnaire comprised ofsocio-demographic characteristics, knowledge about oral hygiene, attitude towards oral hygiene and practicefor prevention of oral disease. Students who had previously resided in urban areas for a minimum period of1 year in the past 5 years were excluded. Data were analyzed by using descriptive analysis and Chi-squaredtest in SPSS version 21.Results: A total of 252 answered questionnaires were returned. The results of the study indicated low level ofawareness for oral hygiene; 75.4 % showed lack of knowledge on dental plaque, 81.3% did not use floss, only46.0 % brush their teeth twice per day and 27.8% visited a dentist last 6 months ago. A good attitude towardsoral hygiene is still lacking, nevertheless a majority of the respondents have slight negative view toward dentalvisit which is mostly influenced by their anxiety.Conclusion: This study revealed deficient of oral hygiene awareness among adolescence suburban schoolchildren in certain aspects of dental hygiene. It therefore highlights that urbanization does not always correlatewith high level of oral hygiene awareness.