Developing a Knowledge Related Oral Health and Literacy Scale

Objectives: Low health literacy (HL) has been linked to poor health outcomes and low utilization of resources, contributing to disparities. Multiple existing tools concentrate on screening or comprehension rather generally.

We hypothesized that more effective communication is possible after assessing individuals’ condition-specific knowledge.
The purpose of the study is to develop a HL scale that is condition and domain-of –knowledge specific for caries, periodontal disease and oral cancer and uses definition/etiology, prevention and treatment to assess depth
Methods: A questionnaire was developed incorporating two validated tools and open-ended questions.
Calibrated interviewers enrolled 58 English-speaking patients at the College.
Descriptive statistics were used for objective data. For open-ended questions, common themes and categories were identified and agreed upon.
Results: The average age was 37 (18-71). 48.27% completed college. 56.89% self reported good oral health. 46.5% stated never having problems learning about health information.

As for caries: 32.8% used the word hole/s in the definition. 22.4% used decay, while 32.8% could not define it or provided wrong concepts. 75.8% identified oral hygiene (OH) as the way to prevent them while 67.2% used the words drill and/or fill for treatment.

For oral cancer: 41.4% did not know about or provided wrong concepts for oral cancer. 25.9% identified tobacco as a cause while 34.5% did not know a cause and 36.2% did not know how it could be treated.

For periodontal disease: 56.9% could not define or provided wrong concepts .17.2% used the word bleeding in the definition. As for prevention: 53.5% identified OH. For treatment: 36.2% did not know any while 20.7% used the words scaling/cleaning.

Conclusions: Our findings, although limited because of sample size and characteristics, provide evidence that it is possible to build a knowledge scale about caries, oral cancer and periodontal disease that has the potential to easily identify gaps and misconceptions.