Oral health information in English newspapers: A content analysis study

Abstract

Background: Mass media has been an important source of health information to the general public. Especially, newspapers have the advantage of providing a variety of information to a broad range of age groups, with wide regional coverage, both in urban and rural areas. Aim and Objective: The aim was to assess the quantity and quality of oral health information in leading 5 English newspapers published in Bangalore city, Karnataka. Materials and Methods: An electronic survey was conducted using archives of five electronic English newspapers published in 2012-2008. Oral health content was retrieved from these newspapers with appropriate key words. A specially designed scale was used to evaluate the information published in these newspapers. Level score index was used for the overall qualitative analysis of all information. In this regard, descriptive statistics was computed. Results: The articles published in 5 years were 266. In which 25.9% articles were on dental caries, 27.8% with periodontal diseases, 40.6% with oral cancer, 2.3% with malocclusion, and 4.5% with fluorosis. The accurate quality of oral health information in these newspapers provided about 14.7%, whereas only 4.5% of the articles provided the take home message. Conclusions: Articles on oral health lacked accuracy and infrequently published. To fill up this gap Public health dentists should effectively utilize these newspapers to educate the people on oral health.

Keywords

• Coverage
• mass media
• newspaper
• oral cancer
• oral health