engleski

Oral health – related quality of life versus socioeconomic and gender differences in the Croatian sample

Purpose: the purpose was to assess oral health - related quality of life with respect to gender and socioeconomic status in the Croatian adolescent and post-adolescent population sample. Experimental Approach: the study comprised 151 randomly selected subjects between 13 and 25 years of age. The sample included 64 (42.4%) male (M = 19.6 ; SD = 3.6 years) and 87 (57.6%) female (M = 19.1 ; SD = 3.5 years) participants. Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) was used to assess oral health - related quality of life. A specially designed questionnaire was used to evaluate socioeconomic status (SE). Gender and socioeconomic status were represented by frequencies and chi- square test. The continuous variable (OHIP) was tested for normality by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and represented by the average mean values and standard deviation. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was assessed for OHIP. Results: socioeconomic status was moderate (55.6%) in the majority as opposed to low (22.5%) and high (21.9%) in the rest of the participants. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for OHIP was 0.866. OHIP average mean values for females (M =38.57, SD=9.71) were slightly higher than for boys (M =35.86, SD=7.39), however it wasn't statistically significant (p=0.058). OHIP results showed similar values for high (M=40.35, SD=12.00) and low (M=39.06, SD=9.11) socioeconomic groups. Significantly lower scores were represented in participants with moderate SE status (M =35.54 ; SD=6.70, p=0.012). Conclusion: OHIP results showed a higher oral health-related quality of life in participants with moderate as opposed to low SE status. Overall results indicated somewhat lower oral health- related quality of life in females.

oral health

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