A study on the relationship of dating to oral health state among people in their 20s

20대 연령층의 이성교제 여부에 따른 구강위생상태에 관한 조사 연구

The purpose of this study was to examine whether dating affected young people's concern for their looks and their oral health state, and to motivate students to promote their oral health, as national oral health depended on students who would grow into eligible members of society in the near future. Relevant literature and data were reviewed, and a survey was conducted on residents in and around Seoul, who were in their 20s, for approximately three months from June through August 2006 to find out about their oral health status. The findings of the study were as follows: 1. Whether they were seeing someone or not was investigated, and it's found that 37.5 percent had a girl friend or boy friend, and that 6.7 percent hadn't. 2. Concerning the state of dating, 40.3 percent, the largest percentage, had been dating for less than a year, and the largest number of them that accounted for 23.6 percent had been dating one person till then, 4.0 percent were considering getting married with those whom they were seeing. The most dominant type of love was eros(romantic or ardent love; 41.7%), followed by stroge(friendly love; 33.3%), and agape(altruistic, devoted love; 12.5%). 3. As for the impact of dating on oral health status, those who were seeing someone were similar to those who weren't in toothbrushing frequency, toothbrushing time and simplified oral hygiene index. There was no significant gap between the two. 4. Concerning the influence of dating on dental-treatment experience, no statistically significant intergroup differences were found in experiences of taking dental-caries treatment, bad-breath treatment and teeth-whitening treatment. There was a statistically significant intergroup gap only in scaling experience(pE0.05). 5. Regarding the impact of dating on oral health care, 59.7 percent of those who were dating thought that it affected oral health care, and the same rate of the others who weren't stood at 38.3 percent. There was a statistically significant gap between the two(pE0.01). 6. As to the influence of general characteristics on oral hygiene index, their age and gender made no statistically significant differences to that. By occupation, however, many of the company employees were in good oral health, and many of them were in bad oral health, too. The office workers were statistically significantly different from the others in that regard(pE0.01).