Efficacy of the Health Belief Model in Enhancing the Oral Health of Female Middle School Students

This study aimed to (1) examine the effect of the Health Belief Model-based intervention (HBM) in enhancing the oral health of students, identify the association between students’ age, family's socioeconomic status (SES), and their oral health. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was used to guide this study. The study included a systematic random sample of 140 female students who were randomly assigned into two groups; 70 students for the study group and 70 students for the control group. These students were recruited from two middle schools for girls in Al-Karkh side in Baghdad City.

The study instrument includes the sociodemographic of age, parents’ level of education, household's occupation, family's monthly income, and student's birth order. Also, it includes the oral health belief questionnaire (OHBQ). Students in the study group only received the HBM-based health education. Data were analyzed using the statistical measures of frequency, percent, Mean, standard deviation, repeated measures ANOVA, and Pearson's correlation.

The study results displayed that the HBM-based intervention positively influenced students’ Perceived Susceptibility of contracting oral disease, Perceived Barriers of adhering to oral health practices, Self Efficacy of adhering to oral health practices, Perceived Benefits of adhering to oral health practices, and the Perceived Severity of contracting oral disease.

The student researcher concluded that the HBM-intervention significantly made the students perceive a lesser chance of contracting oral disease, enabled the students to overcome the barriers to adhere to oral health practices, enabled them to increase their self-confidence of adhering to oral health practices, made them sensitize the potential benefits of adhering to oral health practices, and made them sensitize the potential seriousness of not adhering to oral health practices.