OCCUPATIONAL INFLUENCE ON WOMEN’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS ORAL HEALTH IN THE ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper investigated the influence of occupation on women’s attitude towards oral health among women attending Primary Health Care (PHC) Centres in the Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State of Nigeria. Three hundred and forty seven (347) women were selected from 2,608 women who formed the population using simple random sampling with non- replacement balloting technique. The instrument for data collection was the self-constructed questionnaire. The questionnaire had 14 items based on four point scale and had a Spearman Brown’s reliability co-efficient of 0.79. Data was analyzed using criterion mean while ANOVA was employed in testing the null hypothesis for the study at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that the respondents agreed that occupation influences the attitude of women towards oral health. Also, it was identified that the influence was negative. Based on the findings, it was recommended that women should be enlightened more on the influence of occupation on their oral health. Furthermore, women should be sensitized on the need to prevent oral health problems.