The Health Promotion Agency (HPA) delivered a national marketing campaign ‘Baby Teeth Matter’ to improve oral health of children under five years. Research was undertaken by UMR Research to provide insights on attitudes and behaviour related to oral hygiene, and the campaigns’ impacts between October and December 2017. UMR conducted an online survey and fieldwork, and this report summarises their findings.
Methodology
The research comprised of an online survey of n=1,064 parents and caregivers of children aged under 5 years. Fieldwork was conducted between 13th November and 6th December 2017.
- The margin of error for a 50% figure at the 95% confidence level for a sample size of 1,064 is ±3%.
Sample make-up
- Booster samples for Māori and Pacific Island respondents were recruited for this research.
- A mixture of rural and urban respondents were recruited for this research.
Statistical significance – sub-sample differences
- Any statistically significant differences in the percentages across demographics are reported on – these significance tests were performed at the 95% confidence level.
Note on rounding in the report:
- All numbers are shown rounded to zero decimal places.
- This means that the specified totals are not always exactly equal to the sum of the specified sub-totals. The differences are seldom more than 1%.
- For example: 2.7 + 2.7 = 5.4, if rounded to zero decimal places would appear: 3 + 3 = 5.
In order to achieve booster samples for Māori and Pacific Island respondents the following additional recruiting methods were used:
- Targeted email invitations to SAYit panel members identified as having a Māori and Pacific Island background
- A post via SAYit Facebook page
- Targeted Facebook advertising
- Networking – HPA targeted respondents at the Te Kohanga Expo
- Targeted telephone recruitment to obtain email addresses to send invitation to online survey.
The Pacific Island group was made up of any respondents who identified as Samoan, Cook Island, Tongan, Niuean or Other Pacific Island.
Please note that as ethnicity allows multiple response, there is some overlap across the Māori and Pacific Island respondents. Similar to the Census, for the Māori and Pacific Island groups, every person who indicated more than one ethnicity were recorded in all and counted in each. There were 40 respondents who identified as both Māori and Pacific Island.
The ‘other ethnicity’ group includes all other ethnicities, e.g. all non-Māori and non-Pacific Island respondents.
Key Results
Insight 1: A reasonable proportion allow their child to brush their own teeth (17%) – with a majority either brushing for the child or brushing in conjunction with the child (36% brush for the child/ 21% brush with their child ).
Insight 2: Only half of respondents stated their children’s teeth are brushed twice a day. As the age of the child increased, the more likely they were to brush twice a day – this may be due to various factors such as the ability to engage older children in teeth brushing.
Insight 3: Key motivators to brush twice a day were to keep teeth and gums healthy, and to prevent decay and cavities.
Insight 4: Key barriers to brushing twice a day were difficulty engaging the child in brushing their teeth and time constraints.
Insight 5: A majority claimed that they did not participate in poor oral hygiene practices – such as putting their baby down to sleep with a bottle in their mouth, or putting juice or soft drinks into their baby’s bottle. Although there were small proportions who stated they participated in poor oral hygiene practices.
- A majority also claimed to undertake positive practices – such as lifting their child’s lip to check their teeth are okay and checking that their child spits out toothpaste but does not rinse their mouth out with water. This high agreement does indicate that some respondents may be overstating these behaviours.
Insight 6: A majority (68%) had seen advertising about looking after the teeth of young children. Of these respondents, recall was highest for the HPA Baby Teeth Matter campaign (60%).
Insight 7: On a prompted basis, recall of the Baby Teeth Matter campaign was very high (79%) with awareness slightly higher among Pacific and Māori respondents, 88% and 87% respectively.
Insight 8: The campaign was more effective across females and those on lower incomes (household income less than $30,000).
Insight 9: The most effective channel was television – with a majority of respondents recalling the advertisement from TV followed at much lower levels by social media recall.
Insight 10: The messages that hit home from the campaign were to look after teeth, to brush teeth twice a day, and that baby teeth matter.
Insight 11: A majority of respondents indicated they already knew facts relating to children brushing their teeth.
Insight 12: New information has the potential to cut through – the campaign raised knowledge in particular around the fact that the health of baby teeth can affect the health of adult teeth.
Insight 13: The campaign has had a substantial large impact with around a third of respondents who had seen the Baby Teeth Matter campaign saying they had made changes to their child’s tooth brushing in the last month.
- The two most common changes were to brush twice daily or to generally brush more.
- Among Māori respondents the next most common changes were to remind their child more, let their child do some of the brushing, and paying attention to the quality of the brushing.
- Among Pacific respondents the next most common changes were to purchase a toothbrush and changing toothpaste.
- The diversity of changes indicate the challenges different groups face in brushing twice a day