Development Of A Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (Hpqi) To Measure Doktor Muda (Junior Doctor) Programme Impact On Schoolchildren's Oral Health Knowledge, Attitudes And Behaviour

ABSTRACT

Long term evaluations of impacts of communitybased health promotion programmes are not an easy orstraightforward task to do due to lack of validated andreliable indices. Objective: To develop and test an indexto measure schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge,attitudes, and behaviour as a result of a school-based healthpromotion programme in Malaysia called the DoktorMuda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP). Materials andMethods: The index was developed in English based onthe DMP module and translated into Malay. The Malayversion was tested on 174, 11-12 year old schoolchildren.Psychometric analysis of the index involved content andface validity tests as well as factor analysis, internal andtest-retest reliability. Results: Factor analysis yielded 3factors with groups of items viz. oral health knowledge(OHK), oral health attitudes (OHA) and oral healthbehaviour (OHB). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of thethree factors were 0.61, 0.73, and 0.64, respectively. TheKappa coefficients were 0.70, 0.77 and 0.73, respectively(intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.72, 0.70 and 0.78).The final questionnaire comprised 33 items, namely; OHK11 items, OHA 15 items, and OHB 7 items. Conclusion:The Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (HPQI) tomeasure the DMP impact on schoolchildren’s oral healthknowledge, attitudes, and behaviours was empiricallyverified to be valid and reliable for use among 11-12 yearold Malaysian schoolchildren.