Oral health literacy of Korean adults

Abstract

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Objectives: We used a questionnaire to measure the oral health literacy of Korean adults. We then evaluated the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Methods: This questionnaire was developed using a literacy assessment tool from the National Institute of Korean Language, Republic of Korea. The survey was composed of instructions for dental treatment and oral health information. The components were sub-classified into three cognitive processes (realistic, deductive, and critical domains). Of the 337 university students who received the questionnaire, 84.3 percent responded. We calculated the reliability of the questionnaire using Cronbach's α, to assess the item discrimination and difficulty as well as effectiveness of distracters. Results: We found that the reliability of the 24 items in the questionnaire was 0.89. The mean item discrimination and difficulty values were 0.53 and 0.71. The percentage of correct answers was higher than the effectiveness of the distracters in all items. The mean number of answers to the oral health information data (72.1) was higher than that to dental treatment instructions (63.9). The mean number of answers to the items in the realistic domain (76.1) was higher than that to the items in the deductive (69.4) and critical (65.9) domains. Neither gender nor university major had a significant effect on the percentage of correct answers. Conclusions: Sixty percent of university students were found to have the government-recommended level of oral literacy. Therefore, better oral health education is required to ensure that all individuals meet government-recommended levels. 용어의 정의본 연구에서 사용되는 용어의 개념적 정의는 다음과 같다. 구강건강문해력구강건강 상태를 증진시키고 유지시키기 위하여 현대 사회에 서 구강건강관리 행동에 필요한 정보를 읽고 이해하는 최소한의 능력을 뜻한다. 상황글을 읽고 이해하는 사람인 문해자가 지식이나 인지과정이 적 용되는 맥락을 뜻한다. 내용문해자가 접하는 문해 자료의 장르적인 특성을 뜻한다.(1) 산문: 묘사하는 글과 해설하는 글 연구 대상자의 일반적 특성은 인문계열이 159명(47

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