Knowledge, attitude, and practices toward oral health among school teachers in "Guntur city," Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract

Introduction: School teachers play an important role in the all-round development of children. Quite often, they play an important role in general health education as well as oral health education in children. To perform the above tasks, teachers should have required oral health knowledge and positive attitude about oral health. Objectives: The objective was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices about oral health among school teachers in Guntur city, Andhra Pradesh. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted, and data were collected with pretested self-administered questionnaire. A total of 248 school teachers was selected by simple random method from the list of primary and high school teachers working in Guntur city. Questionnaire consisted of seventeen questions on knowledge, attitude, and practice. Each favorable and unfavorable response was given a score of 1 and 0 respectively. Total score of 60% or more for each domain was considered "satisfactory" whereas < 60% as "unsatisfactory. Data were analyzed with SPSS-17 (Chicago Inc.,) and Chi-square, test was used to test the statistical significance among various variables. Results: A total of 248 school teachers was participated in this study, 64.9% of the teachers had satisfactory knowledge about oral health. About 194 (78.2%) had satisfactory attitude about oral health and around 191 (77%) teachers had satisfactory oral hygiene practice methods. Conclusion: Teachers required being further educated about oral health through an effective media to deliver oral health education to students.

Keywords

• Attitudes
• knowledge
• practices
• school teachers