Relationship among Personal Factors, Predisposing Factors, Enabling Factors, Reinforcing Factors and Oral Health Care Behaviors of Soldiers in Udonthani Province

Abstract

                This cross - sectional analytic research aimed to study the relationship among personal factors, predisposing factors, enabling factors, reinforcing factors and oral health care behaviors of soldiers in Udonthani Province. The sample was 338 soldiers working in Udonthani province. The research  instruments comprised of questionnaires that measured the attitude, health beliefs, and health care behaviors of the soldiers with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.89, 0.85, and 0.91, respectively. The data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Chi-square and Pearson’s correlation.

                The results revealed that the majority of the soldiers were male (92.6%), 78.0% had age  between 20-40 years old, 84.3% were non-commissioned soldier, 88.2% had no underlying disease. They had  received the oral health information from online media and television (52.7 and 43.5% respectively). Most of them (63.3%) had last time accessed the oral health care services more than 1 year. Attitude toward oral health care was at high level (x̄ =4.2, S.D= 0.7). The overall health beliefs was at high level (x̄ =4.2, S.D =0.6) and their oral health care behavior was at high level (x̄ =4.4, S.D=0.8) Factors related to oral health care behaviors of the soldiers were as follow; 1) personal factors were soldier year’s  experience, marital status, income, 2) predisposing factors were attitude and health beliefs, 3) enabling factors were an access and advised receiving from health personal and 4) reinforcing factor was supported from the agency.

                Based on the results, it was suggested that the relevant agencies should provided activities and supported oral self care, developed the attitudes, health beliefs of the soldier and work to develop the quality of oral health care service system.