또래집단의 사회적 강화가 아동의 구강보건행태에 미치는 효과

A Study on the Effects of Social Reinforcement in Peer groups on Children's Dental Health Behavior

The relationships between children's health behavior and variables that effect children's health behavior has been investigated in a number of previous studies. This study was conducted to examine the effects of a peer's social reinforcement on children's dental health behavior in an elementary school. The research design was a nonequivalent pre and post-test quasi-experimental design and the study subjects with one hundred and thirteen eight to nine years old children, and their mothers (57 experimental group, 56 control group) were selected as a study group. Subjects were selected by the convenience sampling method. The study was carried out in an elementary school in Namwon city, Korea, from the 26th of April to the 12th of June in 1999. Data were collected in both the pre and post-test portions. Using the "Health Belief Model", each item of the questionnaire for measurement of dental health behavior was modified and administered for the children and their mothers. The questionnaire for the measurement of dental health behavior was developed by Oh, Y.B.(1994). The Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ of the questionnaire for children were .81, and for the mother were .79. In this study, the health belief model consists of "perceived susceptibility", "perceived seriousness", "perceived barrier", "perceived salience", and "perceived benefit". The questionnaire for the children was composed of 37 items, and the questionnaire for the mother was composed of 40 items. Data were analyzed by frequency, ${\chi}^2-test$, ANOVA, Pearson's Correlation, and multiple regression analysis by a SAS program. The results of this study were summarized as follows ; 1. The first hypothesis that the experimental group would have more change in the frequency of brushing per week than that of control group was accepted(t=3.817, p=0.000). Mean tooth brushing scores in the experimental group improved significantly from pre-test to post-test, but in the control group there was no significant improvement in tooth brushing scores. 2. The second hypothesis that the experimental group would have more change in score of dental health behavior than that of control group was accepted(benefit : t=2.804, p=0.006, salience: t=2.608, p=0,010). An evaluation between the experimental group and the control group showed significant change from pre-test to post-test in health behavior scores. 3. The third hypothesis that higher scores of social reinforcement would create more change in the scores of tooth brushing frequency in the experimental group was accepted(${\beta}$=0.169, p=0.000. Multiple regression was used to examine the peer's social reinforcement scores and the relative influence of significant variables in previous ANOVA and Pearson's correlation test on children's frequency of brushing during the post-test. The results of the study indicated that the combination of social reinforcement of peers with variables pertaining to mother and householder were significantly related and effectively improved a child's tooth brushing.