A cross-cultural comparison of dental health attitudes and behaviour amongfreshman dental students in Japan, Hong Kong and West China

Objective: To clarify the differences in dental health attitudes/behaviour among freshman dental students. Design: Cross-cultural differences. Setting : Japan, Hong Kong and West China. Participants and methods: The original v ersion of the Hiroshima University-Dental Behavioural Inventory (HU-DBI) wa s written in Japanese. After testing the validity of both English and Chine se versions, the original version of the HU-DBI was administered to 58 fres hman Japanese dental students, the English version to 43 Hong Kong Chinese peers and the Chinese version to 39 West Chinese peers. Results: Significan t cultural differences were found for 16 items out of 20. The most striking result was that the Japanese students were more likely to have used a dye to see how clean their teeth were, compared to their Chinese peers (P <0.00 1). The Chinese students were less likely to have a belief that they could clean their teeth well without using toothpaste (P <0.001), whereas higher percentages of the Chinese students worried about having bad breath (P <0.0 01). A higher percentage of the Hong Kong students reported that they regul arly checked their teeth in a mirror than did their West Chinese or Japanes e peers (P <0.05). Conclusions: There were considerable differences in dent al health attitudes/behaviour among freshman dental students in the three c ultural groups.