Oral health attitudes related to the socioeconomic level in adults.

Abstract

Introduction: Attitudes intervene decisively in the onset and development of oral diseases. This paper analyzes the attitudes toward the oral health and its relationship with socioeconomic status (SES) in adults from the city of Corrientes, Argentina.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out. Information on sociodemographic and oral health attitudes was collected through a household survey using the technique of direct observation by the "face to face" interviewer. The sample size was determined by establishing a confidence level of 95% for the generalization of results (381 individuals). Simple random sampling design was used for the selection of households to be surveyed, which was supplemented with a non-probability sampling procedure for selecting individuals to be interviewed, based on data provided by the 2010 census. We used a SPSS 21.0 program for the analysis of data. Differences according to the socioeconomic level were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test, using U Mann-Whitney tests to assess differences between pairs.

Results: It was found that individuals from lower socioeconomic level have less favorable attitudes of oral health, particularly in regard to the attitude to dental pain and frequent reason to dentist consultation.

Conclusion: The results of this work can be considered as an important resource to design intervention strategies that address the social and cultural determinants of health-disease process.