Title: Use of an Animated Video for Child Oral Health Education as a Brief Online Intervention Designed for Parent-child Dyads
Description: Since dental caries in children remains a significant public health problem, this study developed a brief cartoon video e-health intervention focused on parents’ ensuring their children’s engagement in three key oral health behaviors: brushing twice a day with fluoridated toothpaste, avoiding the consumption of large quantities of sugar-containing foods and beverages, and visiting the dentist every six months. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the cartoon video as a brief e-health intervention, and to identify significant predictors of parental self-efficacy to ensure their children’s engagement in recommended oral health behaviors after viewing an animated video with their child. The sample included 75 parents with a child aged six to eight years. Parents were mostly female (85%, n = 63), white (84.0%, n = 63), with a mean age of 35.2 years (SD = 5.5), mean educational level between a two- and four-years of college, and mean household income of $20,000 to $39,000 per year. Parents had one or two children (51.8%, n = 39) with a mean age of 6.72 years who were mostly boys (65.3%, n = 49) in public school (80.0%, n = 60).

Findings indicated the brief e-health cartoon was an effective intervention, given significant changes from pre-video to post-video in mean scores for: parent oral health knowledge (t = –5.437, df = 74, p = 0.000); global stage of change for performing all three key oral health behaviors (t = –1.804, df = 74, p = 0.000); and, global self-efficacy for performing all three key oral health behaviors (t = –3.838, df = 74, p = 0.000). Further, most parents rated the cartoon highly and indicated they would recommend it to other parents and children. Backwards stepwise regression, controlling for social desirability, indicated higher post-video parental self-efficacy for the three recommended oral health behaviors post-video was significantly predicted by: parent female gender (B = 1.072, p = 0.000); parent was not born in the U.S. (B = –0.544, p = 0.028); parent had a partner (yes) (B = 0.707, p = 0.000); parent was a student (yes) (B = 0.933, p = 0.001); lower parent education level (B = –0.142, p = 0.021); child was not in public school (B = –0.427, p = 0.028); higher Parental Intention Scale (PI-S-3) score (B = 0.302, p = 0.011); and higher parent pre-video oral health knowledge (B = 0.313, p = 0.000)—with 55.2% of variance predicted (R2 = 0.608, adjusted R2 = 0.552) by the model.