Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Oral Hygiene Among Students of a Private University

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice among pre-final and final year students of pharmacy, medicine, biotechnology, and business faculties about oral hygiene.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of students towards oral hygiene at a private university in Malaysia. Validated questionnaires were distributed to a convenient stratified sample of 324 students studying in the different selected faculties, namely pharmacy, medicine, biotechnology, and business, respectively. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 24.0 was used to analyze the data.

RESULTS: With regard to knowledge, upon evaluation, it was seen that the students of the Faculty of Pharmacy had the highest percentage of adequate knowledge, which was statistically significant with a P-value of 0.001 and the effect size of 0.246. On the evaluation of attitudes, it was seen that the Faculty of Biotechnology had the highest positive attitudes. According to race, Malay students had the highest positive attitude among all the races that participated in the study, which showed a P-value of 0.037 with the effect size of 0.034. Regarding practice, the Faculty of Pharmacy had the lowest practice compared with the other faculties. This variable had a P-value of 0.001 and showed to have significance against the practice with an effect size of 0.193.

CONCLUSION: Overall, a good attitude was seen amongst the students on their oral hygiene. It was also observed that the attitude, knowledge, and practice of the students in a private university increased with an increasing level of education.