• 한국치위생학회지
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• 제16권6호
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• pp.879-891
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• 2016

Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the oral health literacy of foreign students in Korea regarding their utilization of dental clinic services and oral care products. Methods: This study measured the oral health literacy through a self-administered questionnaire that were distributed among 145 foreign students in Seoul and 153 Korean students in Wonju, Gangwon province. The questionnaire is used to assess the oral health literacy with a total of 92 questions including 30 questions on linguistic oral health literacy, and 40 questions on functional oral health literacy (sentence translation ability 27 questions, document decoding ability 13 questions), and 22 questions on the general characteristics. The collected data were analyzed by frequency test, ${\chi}^2$, independent t-test, and ANOVA with p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The linguistic oral health literacy awareness score was doubly lower in foreign students $20.5{\pm}22.4%$ than Korean students $53.9{\pm}18.4%$ (p<0.05), three words were not statistically significant with less than 10% of all the foreign and Korean students. Correct answer rate of sentence translation ability was statistically significant in all questions by foreign students $26.7{\pm}27.1%$ and Korean students $99.0{\pm}2.3%$ (p<0.05). Correct answer rate of document decoding ability showed a relatively small difference between foreign students and Korean students with $54.7{\pm}33.1%$ and $87.3{\pm}8.7%$, respectively, but it was statistically significant in all questions (p<0.05). Oral health literacy according to residence period and Korean language class level of foreign students were the most correlated among the other variables (p<0.05). Conclusions: Dental terminology was difficult for ordinary people to understand regardless of the Korean language proficiency levels, so it is recommended and needed to express dental clinical terms in simple layman's term or to use illustrations to dental patients. In case of foreign residents in Korea, interpretation services are needed. Additionally, labels and instructions of oral hygiene products retailed in Korea with the consideration for foreigners are required.