ORAL HYGIENE ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOR OF PRE-CLINICAL AND CLINICAL UNDERGRADUATE DENTAL STUDENTS
Keywords:
Oral hygiene, behavior and attitude, dental students, “Hiroshima University-Dental Behavior Inventoryâ€Abstract
The objective of this study was to compare the oral health behavior and attitude among the pre-clinical and clinical undergraduate dental students of a university in Pakistan.
A cross-sectional study was designed and the students were categorised as pre-clinical and clinical students. “Hiroshima University-Dental Behavior Inventory (HU-DBI) questionnaire†was filled by the students and the “HU-DBI†scores were calculated and compared between pre-clinical and clinical undergraduate dental students through Mann-Whitney U test.
A total of 119 dental students took part in this research of which 52 (43.7 %) students were from pre-clinical classes while 67 (56.3 %) were clinical students. Overall mean score of oral health behavior was 6.03±1.613 while the median was 6±2. The mean score of students in pre-clinical group was 6.04±1.608 (median = 6±1) and the mean score of the students in clinical group was 5.98±1.627 (median = 6±1). The difference in mean scores of two groups was statistically insignificant (p=0.887). Hence, no significant difference was noted in oral health attitude and behavior between clinical and pre-clinical undergraduate dental students.
