Effect of oral health-related factors on oral health knowledge, attitude, and practice of college students

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Objectives The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of oral health-related factors on the oral health knowledge, attitude, and practice of students of the Department of Dental Hygiene major, Health-related major, General major, and to provide primary data to improve the oral care ability of university students. Methods After institutional review board approval, the study was conducted from May 15 to December 1, 2017. All 363 university students in Busan completed a questionnaire. In total, 332 questionnaires were analyzed. Thirty-one cases were excluded due to unreasonable responses. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0. Results Analysis of the factors related to knowledge, attitude, and practice of oral health according to the major field of study of the respondents indicated that students in the Dental Hygiene major demonstrated significantly better results. Conclusions It is necessary to determine a way to manage the oral health of university students. In addition, voluntary participation of universities to improve oral health of university students is desirable. It is also necessary to establish national health policies and a national health care education curriculum for university students.