Abstract
Objective: This study aimed to investigate the level of oral health behaviours (OHB) and oral health-related dietary behaviours (OHD-B) and to find out their relationship and their determinants among a relatively large sample of university students. Research design and participants: In a cross-sectional study, 535 Iranian university students were selected in order to investigate their OHB and OHD-B through a self-administrated questionnaire. Main outcome measures: Tooth brushing, flossing, use of fluoride toothpaste, and sugary snacking collected data on OHB. Consumption frequency of 16 common cariogenic and non-cariogenic foodstuffs was used for evaluation of OHD-B. Latent class analysis (LCA) and latent class regression (LCR) were applied to identify classes of OHB and OHD-B and their potential determinants, respectively. ANOVA, Chi-square and Spearman's correlation were used. Results: In total, 49.7% and 53.2% of participants had good OHB and OHD-B, respectively. The results of LCR indicated that female gender (OR: 8.22, 95% CI: 3.42-19.72), higher age (OR: 1.39, 95% CI: 1.04-1.85), doctorate level (OR: 6.99, 95% CI: 2.22-21.98), and being single (OR: 3.54, 95% CI: 1.36-9.19) were related to good OHB. Furthermore, LCR analysis showed that students who lived with their families had greater chance for having good OHD-B (OR: 3.01, 95% CI: 2.00-4.53). Students with good OHD-B reported brushing and flossing their teeth more frequently than those with poor OHD-B (P⟨0.05). Conclusions: The shortage of favourable oral health behaviours among university students highlights the importance of planning oral health programs to improve their oral health, especially their dietary behaviours.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.