Objectives: A descriptive study of exploratory character with the objective to determine the representation of a healthy tooth and an unhealthy tooth, associated with the concept of dental decay. Methods: Children of both genders (880), distributed in six age groups of low socio-economic level, some already having prior contact with the dentist and others not. Three instruments were used: a sociodemographic questionnaire, pictograms representation protocols and drawing content analysis grid. Results: Content analysis on the drawings indicates significant discrepancies, inherent to the pictorial profiles. Conclusion: The results point to the need of developing educative tools for oral health.Keywords: health education, healthy tooth, tooth decay
IntroductionTooth decay is currently a public health issue, not because it triggers a high mortality rate, but due to the high incidence of its morbidity rate in the European region. Between 1999 and 2006, Portugal saw a significant reduction in the percentage of children suffering from tooth decay, with the percentage of six-year-old children free from tooth decay increasing from 33% to 51%. In spite of this improvement, one cannot lose sight of the goal set by the World Health Organization: that the percentage of six-year-old children free from tooth decay in the European region by the year 2020 is no lower than 80% (1, 2). Tooth decay is an infectious disease of multifactorial etiology that affects every age group in the course of a lifetime. It is, however, during childhood, that a concern with the eruption of deciduous teeth is triggered (3). Thus, in the context of tooth decay prevention and oral health promotion, to inform, that is, to provide and disseminate information, is of paramount importance (4-6), but it is also highly pertinent to understand the extent to which children actually perceive and internalize such informative contents that would lead them to adopt a "self-prevention" attitude (7).In respect to data collection techniques, drawing is the earliest form of cognitive-emotional expression, and a basic and universal form of language. The use of the resource "drawing" for research purposes has been employed as a methodological guideline for qualitative research conducted in the field of health studies (8-12). As an empiric assessment tool, drawing presents itself as a consummate projective instrument, for it is a symbolic vehicle that inter-subjectively brings to light the inner world of the child (13-19). At our institution, several research projects in Paediatric Dentistry (20-23) and Paediatric Psychology have used the resource "drawing" as an empirical instrument (24-26) as well as a ludic-pictorial material supported in the ludic (re)configuration of the dentist doctor's face (27, 28) and in the dramatization with finger puppets (29) contextualized in oral health promotion. It is undeniable that, at the medical appointment setting, the direct motivation when using ludic-pictorial material is a "major resource" (21) for purposes of oral hea...
