Abstract

ANTONIO, Luciana Pion; GOUVEA, Giovana Renata; SOUZA, Luciane Zanin de  and  CORTELLAZZI, Karine Laura. Evaluation of different educational methods in oral health in children aged 7-10 years old. RFO UPF [online]. 2015, vol.20, n.1, pp. 52-58. ISSN 1413-4012.

Objective: to assess the influence of educational strategies on the oral health of children aged 7 to 10 years from a public school in Araras, SP, Brazil. Materials and method: one hundred and twelve (112) children participated in the study; they were randomly divided in 4 groups. Each group participated in a different educational activity, including theater (n=15), gymkhana (n=9), comic books (n=22), and lecture (n=26). All children answered a questionnaire containing 20 multiple-choice questions related to oral health, which was applied two weeks before the introduction of the educational methods and immediately after their performance. Descriptive statistics were performed through absolute and relative frequencies. In order to compare right answered questions before and after each educational activity, the McNemar statistical test was applied with significance level of 5%. Results: comic books represented the educational activity with higher number of right answers after completion. There was not significant statistical difference for right answers before and after the educational activity of gymkhana, for any of the questions. Conclusion: comic books showed the best results for the studied sample. However, the educational methods presented did not generally influence the acquired knowledge of the population studied.

Keywords : Motivation.; Education.; Schoolchildren..