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

Long term evaluations of impacts of community based health promotion programmes are not an easy or straightforward task to do due to lack of validated and reliable indices. Objective: To develop and test an index to measure schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour as a result of a school-based health promotion programme in Malaysia called the Doktor Muda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP). Materials and Methods: The index was developed in English based on the DMP module and translated into Malay. The Malay version was tested on 174, 11-12 year old schoolchildren. Psychometric analysis of the index involved content and face validity tests as well as factor analysis, internal and test-retest reliability. Results: Factor analysis yielded 3 factors with groups of items viz. oral health knowledge (OHK), oral health attitudes (OHA) and oral health behaviour (OHB). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the three factors were 0.61, 0.73, and 0.64, respectively. The Kappa 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; OHK 11 items, OHA 15 items, and OHB 7 items. Conclusion: The Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (HPQI) to measure the DMP impact on schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours was empirically verified to be valid and reliable for use among 11-12 year old Malaysian schoolchildren.