Sociodemographic Correlates of Practice towards Oral Hygiene among University Students: A Cross-sectional Insight

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to determine sociodemographic correlates of practice towards oral hygiene (OH) among university students in a private university. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed among university students in Malaysia using a prevalidated questionnaire. The convenient stratified sampling method was adopted to recruit participants from four main faculties of a private university. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 24.0 was used to analyze the data. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the correlates of practice of OH among the study participants. Results: Out of a total of 324 participants, female students had far-good practice towards OH than males. The final year students showed better OH practice than the pre-final years. Among the studied races, the Chinese students had the highest percentage of adequate practice than the rest. Overall, this study found that most of the students had fair to good practice towards OH. Conclusion: Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that statistically significant differences (p<0.05) were present among the six demographic variables. The current study found that age groups, race, faculty, year of education, parents’ education, and healthcare professionals in the family were the sociodemographic correlates of practice towards OH among the university students in Malaysia.