Association of Maternal Sense of Coherence With Oral Health Behavior of Children With Special Health Care Needs: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Sense of coherence (SOC) has been adopted to analyze stress coping skills as well as to find its association with health and oral health behavior. The Arabic version of SOC has not been developed and adopted in the Saudi Arabian population; furthermore, few studies have attempted to analyze the association of a mother's sense of coherence with the oral health behavior of Special Care Health Needs (SCHN) children. Hence, this study aimed to observe the association of mothers' SOC scores with their children's oral health behavior, along with the validation of the scale. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 170 mothers of children with SCHN. Participants were recruited from two schools in Riyadh City and one school in Makkah, respectively. Descriptive statistics, validation, reliability, factor analysis, and multinomial logistic regression were carried out using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, Version 20, 2011; IBM Corp., Armonk, USA). Results: The mean SOC-13 score was 61.6 (+/- 10.1), with a median value of 61. The SOC scale elicited a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.77. The Spearman-Brown-Brownuttman split-half reliability coefficients were found to be 0.70, respectively. The analysis confirmed a three-factor solution, which explains about 51.9% of the total variance. Mothers with higher SOC tend to utilize dental services for children [OR 5.69, P = 0.029, CI 1.19-27.02] and restrict sugary drinks to once a day [OR 9.31, P = 0.00, CI 1.95-44.44]. Conclusion: The reliability of the Arabic scale that was adopted after translation in the present study was found to be high; the scale confirms the three-factor solution. Mothers who scored low on the SOC scale tended to utilize less dental service for their children as well as overlook the sugary drink/day intake of the children.