International Journal of Collaborative Research on Internal Medicine & Public Health

Phenomenology of Students’ Perception and Behavior on Oral and Tooth Health

Background & objective: Tooth decay is the most widespread and prevalent man disease and there are only limited individuals who never suffer from it in their life time. Oral - tooth health refers to all oral health & performance aspects, particularly gum & teeth. The present study aimed to analyze student’s perception and behavior regarding oral health in Jooy-bar town, in Iran.

Methodology: This study is a qualitative method based analyzing the conventional content of 6 schools, at 3 levels of primary, secondary and high school in Jooy-bar town in 2010. In this qualitative study, given the importance of deeply examining people’s experiences, data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Data was analyzed using conventional content analysis method.

Findings: The extracted themes were classified into two major clusters, and eight sub-clusters rekated to perception and behavior. The Perception parts included: the ways that led to getting decayed tooth, the styles to prevent it & the role of diet in oral & tooth health, some definition of tooth decay, milk & permanent tooth; whereas the behavior part covers necessary measures in taking care of healthy teeth & those in facing with decayed tooth.

Conclusions: The students do not possess sufficient knowledge about the importance of tooth & month health and it seems that just knowing the ways to prevent the factors behind tooth decay cannot influence people’s behavior. Thus, to plan regular training programs related to oral and tooth health in schools is inevitable and is strongly required.

Author(s):

Ghassem Abedi , Farideh Rostami , Sedigheh Eftekhari

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