Background: Health messages can play an important role in motivating people to improve their health-related behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of message-framing on oral health-related behaviors and dental plaque among pregnant women. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 104 pregnant women in Izeh, Iran in 2017. Participants were randomly divided into three groups; gain-framed, loss-framed and control groups. The research instrument included a demographic form along with the constructs of knowledge, attitude, behavioral intention, self-efficacy, performance, and dental plaque index derived from previous studies. Moreover, gain- and loss-framed messages were sent to the intervention groups via cell phones but the control group did not receive any messages in this regard. The participants’ dental plaque was also examined within two steps( at baseline and 8-weeks follow-up) by a dentist. The significance level of the tests was considered by p<0.05. Results: The mean scores of knowledge, attitude, behavioral intention, and self-efficacy had significantly increased in the gain- and loss-framed intervention groups; (gain-framed knowledge(6.05±1.90;CI:5.40-6.71); attitude(5.00±3.61;CI:3.75-6.24); behavioral intention (2.91±1.59;CI:2.36-3.46), and self-efficacy (4.42±2.69;CI:3.50-5.35), loss-farmed knowledge (5.71±1.52;CI:5.19-6.23), attitude (4.54±2.67;CI:3.62-5.46), behavioral intention (2.25±1.94;CI:1.58-2.92), and self-efficacy (3.97±2.60;CI:3.07-4.86) (p<0.001) as compared to the control group; but no significant difference was observed in the control group (knowledge (0.38±1.45;CI:0.12-0.89, p=0.135); attitude (0.88±3.63;CI:0.38-2.14, p= 0.166); behavioral intention (-0.38±1.74;CI:-0.98-0.22 , p=0.2); self-efficacy (.0.50±3.23;CI:-1.62-0.62, p=0.37) ). The rising trend in the mean score of the behaviors in the intervention groups was significantly higher than that in the control group (p<0.001). The percentage of dental plaque in the gain- and loss-framed intervention groups also showed a significant decrease compared with that in the control group (gain-framed dental plaque (16.46±11.66;CI:12.46-20.47, p<0.001); loss-framed dental plaque (15.06±8.52;CI:12.13-17.99, p<0.001). Conclusion: The results showed that message-framing could enhance knowledge, attitude, behavioral intention, self-efficacy, and performance regarding oral health, also it could reduced dental plaque in the intervention groups as compared to the control group. Meanwhile, no significant difference was observed in terms of the effectiveness of the loss- or gain-framed messages in these construct. The results might help health practioners to develop tailored oral health promoting messages for pregnant women.
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Araban et al. (2020) studied this question.