DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/GVE0-5W94

Defense Date

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Dentistry

First Advisor

Tegwyn Brickhouse

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine if motivational interviewing with written/illustrated infant oral health education provided to caregivers of pediatric dental patients increases caregivers’ oral health literacy compared to verbal only motivational instruction. Methods: This is a cohort study of caregivers and their child receiving oral health anticipatory guidance utilizing motivational interviewing with and without visual aids. Caregivers (N=20) of pediatric dental patients age 0-4 that presented to the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry for a new patient exam were recruited for the study. Caregivers were randomly assigned into 2 groups: the intervention group (IG), and the control group (CG). Each caregiver took a pre-test to determine their infant oral health literacy. Then the IG received infant oral health education using a flipbook, and the CG received the same information in verbal form. Each caregiver had a brief motivational interviewing session. The caregivers then took the same test (post-test). At the pre-test time period, groups were compared by Fisher’s exact test or a two group t-test, as appropriate. The post-test score of the two groups were compared using an ANCOVA. Results: Currently, 20 patients have been enrolled in the study. There was no significant difference between the CG and the IG in the pre-test scores (P= 0.3913) or the post-test scores (P=0.3022). The intervention group had a nominally higher score after the education. Conclusions: This study was only a pilot study with N=20 caregivers. This study may be used to estimate the number of subjects needed to demonstrate a significant difference.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

May 2012

Included in

Dentistry Commons

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