Factors related to oral health care behavior of village public health, Kantang district,Trang province

Abstract

     This study was a descriptive cross-sectional research aimed at investigating personal factors, predisposing factors, enabling factors, reinforcing factors, and self-oral health care behaviors among village health volunteers in Kantang District, Trang Province. The study also examined the relationship between predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors and self-oral health care behaviors among the volunteers. The sample consisted of 205 participants. The research instrument was a questionnaire divided into three parts: Part 1 – personal factors; Part 2 – predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors; and Part 3 – self-oral health care behavior. The questionnaire had a reliability coefficient of 0.98. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient, with a significance level set at 0.05.

     The results showed that most of the village health volunteers were female, aged between 36–45 years, married, with the highest education level being upper secondary school/vocational certificate. Most families had an average monthly income between 10,000–15,000 baht, and most volunteers had 1–5 years of experience. Overall, the participants had a high level of perception of predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors (M = 4.17, SD = 0.47). Specifically, predisposing factors were at a high level (M = 3.82, SD = 0.51), enabling factors were high (M = 4.41, SD = 0.59), and reinforcing factors were moderate (M = 4.29, SD = 0.62). The overall level of self-oral health care behavior was high (M = 4.04, SD = 0.54). Furthermore, there was a statistically significant and very high correlation between predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors and self-oral health care behaviors (r = 0.797**, p = 0.001) with a significance level set at 0.05