Research: Factors related to oral health care behavior of junior high school students from Thamakham Wittaya School, Don Sai Distric, Potaram Subdistric, Ratchaburi Province

Abstract

This descriptive study is aimed to 1) study personal factors, knowledge, attitude and behavior about the oral health care of junior high school students from Thamakham Wittaya School. 2) study the relationship between knowledge, attitude and oral health care behavior of junior high school students from Thamakham Wittaya School. The representative sample is 146 junior high school students from Thamakham Wittaya School. The research instrument is questionnaires verified by three experts and two sides of reliability. One is the knowledge of oral health care equals to 0.77 and another is the attitude of oral health care equals to 0.76. The data was analyzed by frequency, mean, standard deviation and Pearson's correlation. The research result found out that 1.Most of the representative sample have a high-level of knowledge, attitude and behavior of oral health care. 2.The knowledge and the attitude of oral health care are statistically significant and related to the oral care behavior of junior high school students from Thamakham Wittaya School, Don Sai, Potaram, Ratchaburi at (r = 0.763, p-value <0.01) and (r = 0.894, p-value <0.01) From these result, the sanitarian should help students promote the knowledge especially about meeting up with the dentist and brushing teeth at least 2-3 minutes. Moreover, they should have more positive attitude with using dental floss or going to see the dentist as soon as they notice some black, brown spot on their teeth to prevent the decayed tooth. These knowledge is going to affect their better oral care behavior in the future.