Oral health habits, attitudes and behaviors of Portuguese adolescents
-
Henrique Pedro Soares Luís
,
Victor Abreu Assunção
Abstract
Purpose: Oral health has a profound impact on the health of adolescents. The aim of the present study was to obtain information on habits, knowledge and oral hygiene attitudes of Portuguese teenagers and to study the gender differences concerning these issues.
Methods: A total of 1203 adolescents participated in the study (55.8% females; mean age, 14.9 years). To recruit participants, a national network of community dental hygienists, working in the health centers, was created, and adolescents were contacted at the schools. A questionnaire was applied in the classroom, during school hours, under supervision of one researcher and the classroom teacher, after collection of informed consent forms.
Results: Portuguese adolescents do not seem to have dental fear but have some anxiety when at the dental office; girls are more anxious than boys. Girls are also more concerned with esthetics and aware of dental problems and care about oral health of family and friends. Parental supervision is more relevant for boys in order to obtain better compliance with dental care; however, 97.2% of the adolescents do not consider maintaining teeth throughout the lifetime as relevant.
Conclusion: Teenagers recognize dental professionals as educators and oral health as relevant in their lives. It is possible to assume that gender has an influence on adolescent’s habits, behavior and attitudes regarding oral hygiene. There is a difference between boys and girls concerning their habits, knowledge and attitudes in dental hygiene; this difference may show the need to create different strategies for oral health promotion for these two groups of adolescents.
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©2016 by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Smoking: do you really know the risk?
- Original Articles
- Practices and perceptions of adolescent girls regarding the impact of dysmenorrhea on their routine life: a comparative study in the urban, rural, and slum areas of Chandigarh
- Needs and expectations of adolescent in-patients: the experience of Gaslini Children’s Hospital
- Prevalence and determinants of cigarette smoking among adolescents in secondary schools in Port Harcourt, Southern Nigeria
- Comprehensive obesity evaluation and treatment of three adolescents: a case series
- Exercise, bodyweight perception and related weight loss behavior among adolescents in Trinidad and Tobago
- Oral health habits, attitudes and behaviors of Portuguese adolescents
- Using UV photoaged photography to better understand Western Australian teenagers’ attitudes towards adopting sun-protective behaviors
- Adolescent pesticide exposures reported to Texas poison centers
- Can a healthy youth development clinic serving latino families be youth friendly and family oriented? A mixed-methods evaluation
- Insights into Facebook Pages: an early adolescent health research study page targeted at parents
- Iranian adolescents’ insufficient physical activity: a mixed methods explanatory sequential study
- Sensation seeking indirectly affects perceptions of risk for co-occurrent substance use
- The understanding of risk factors for eating disorders in male adolescents
- Case Reports
- The role of temperament in traumatic hearing loss: a single case study of a cochlear-implanted patient
- Congenital megalourethra: a case report of an isolated delayed presentation
- Short Communication
- Problematic internet use and social networking site use among Dutch adolescents
- Letter to the Editor
- A teen’s perspective: adolescent access to their own electronic medical records
