Saúde bucal e gestação: atitudes de usuárias do serviço público de Juiz de Fora – MG

Abstract

The evaluation of attitudes has become vital due to the necessity to include behavioral aspects to the diagnosis of oral health/disease conditions for specific groups, such as the group of pregnant women. This cross-sectional study developed and validated an instrument to evaluate the attitudes of pregnant women who use the public services of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil, towards oral health and assessed the association between attitudes and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as pregnancy history of the population. The qualitative methodology was used to create questions about attitudes related to oral health during pregnancy. After apparent validation, the questions gave origin to a closed instrument whose answers were developed in scale such as the three-point Likert Scale (Agree; Don’t Know; and Disagree). This instrument was applied at interviews, individually, to a representative sample of the city constituted by 312 pregnant women with ages between 13 and 43. The statistical analysis tested the reliability of the instrument through the internal consistency method, determined by Cronbach’s alpha (α) and verified the association between the dependent variable (attitude) and the independent variables (demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and present and past history of pregnancy) using the Mann-Whitney Test. The level of significance adopted was 5%. The reliability evaluation of the instrument resulted in a scale called “Scale of Attitudes towards Oral Health” (SA-OH) made of 55 attitude questions (α=0.82), divided into three subscales: Diet and hygiene (α =0.71); Bidirectional relation (α=0.74) and Myths and beliefs (α=0.76). The total score for SA-OH showed that only 63.8% of pregnant women presented a favorable attitude towards oral health and these were significantly associated to the variables of level of education (P=0.007), number of pregnancies (P=0.028), number of children (P=0.029), and health problems during previous pregnancies (P=0.010). The results showed that it is possible to develop a reliable and valid instrument to evaluate the attitudes of pregnant women towards oral health. Results also showed the need to reinforce individual and/or collective actions of health promotion and protection which should be directed to this specific group.