A Study on Dental State of Health and Dental Health Behaviors of Students in Elementary School and their Mothers

초등학생과 어머니의 구강건강 상태와 행동에 관한 연구

The purposes of this study are to do surveys of the state of health and dental health behaviors of higher grade students in elementary school and their mothers, to investigate the relationship of students' dental health, and to apply those results to the systematic and efficient dental health care. The subjects were totally 618 people, including 309 elementary school students in 4th, 5th, or 6th grades and their mothers in Pusan. The questionnaires were used as instruments, which were made by the researcher and related with other preceeding studies. The content validity of the instruments was tested by two professors of nursing. Dental checking were conducted by an expert of dental sanitation, according to the standard of the World Health Organization. The period of collecting data was 20 months from October 20th to December 20th in 2000 and the collected data were analyzed by SAS program and classified as the real number, the percentage, the mean, the standard deviation, t-test, and F-test. In conclusion, there is no significant correlation between grades and treated or treatment-needed permanent teeth. There is the highest significant correlation between treated or treatment-needed permanent teeth and students' dental health behaviors. There is high significant correlation between mothers' dental health behaviors and students' dental health behaviors. Also, There is significant correlation between mothers' state of dental health and students' state of dental health. From the results of this study, the students' dental health behaviors are the most important variables in the students' state of dental health. But both boys(9.48) and girls(9.97) get the low marks on the total mark 15 about brushing, which can be self-controlled. Therefore, the developments of dental health guidance in education about dental health by mothers or the educational courses in schools, such as brushing educations by the experts, dental health education, brushing after lunch, or the various equipments in brushing, should be accomplished. Above all, behavior-centered education should be conducted instead of knowledge-centered education.