Respiratory tract infection (RTI) is a major public health challenge during the Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah. This study aims to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of Malaysian Hajj and Umrah pilgrims towards the prevention of RTIs in 2018 and determine correlations among three domains. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 225 Umrah and Hajj pilgrims. Knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) towards RTI prevention was assessed by using a validated self-administered questionnaire among pilgrims attending a weekly orientation course organized by private Hajj/Umrah companies. Out of 225 participants, 65.9% of respondents were female with the mean (SD) age of 46.74 (13.38) years. The interquartile range (IQR) score for knowledge is 18.0 (6.0), the mean scores of attitude and practice are 32.65 (4.72) and 25.30 (4.9). respectively. Significant and negative linear correlations between knowledge and practice (r = −0.232, p < 0.001), and attitude and practice (r = 0.134, p = 0.045) were observed. Results from the current study showed good knowledge of RTIs among Malaysian pilgrims. However, a poor attitude was reflected in their preventive practice behaviors. This will further help in the prevention and management of RTIs during Hajj and Umrah. Therefore, an extensive educational health campaign should be provided to pilgrims to create awareness.

Background: Hajj pilgrimage faces numerous challenges including a high prevalence of respiratory tract infection as well as its prevention strategies. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire to evaluate knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) towards respiratory tract infections (RTIs) prevention among Malaysian Hajj pilgrims. Methods: This study was conducted among Malaysian Umrah pilgrims in Malaysia from Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan. The questionnaire then underwent a series of validation process that included content, face validity and exploratory part. Item response theory (IRT) analysis was utilized for the validation of the knowledge domain. The attitude and practice were validated using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Results: The validation process resulted in a questionnaire that comprised of four main sections: demography, knowledge, attitude, and practice. Following IRT analysis of the knowledge domain, all items analyzed were within the acceptable range of difficulty and discrimination. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (KMO) was 0.72 and 0.84 for attitude and practice domain respectively and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity for both domains were highly significant (P < 0.001). The factor analysis resulted in two factors with total of 12 items in attitude domain, and 2 factors with total of 13 items in the practice domain with satisfactory factor loading (> 0.3). The Cronbach’s alpha for reliability of the knowledge, attitude and practice domains all showed acceptable values of > 0.6 (0.92, 0.77 and 0.85). Conclusion: The findings of this validation and reliability study showed that the developed questionnaire had a satisfactory psychometric property for measuring KAP of Malaysian Hajj pilgrims.

Background: Oral health-related conditions are among the common conditions seen in adults in India. The usage of inappropriate measurement tools that are unvalidated may result in deceptive and imprecise findings that might lead to substandard plans for cessation programs and ineffectiveness. This study was conducted to validate a questionnaire that can assess the factor structure of knowledge, attitude, and behaviour towards oral health among adults in India by confirmatory factor analysis. Methods: Simple random sampling was conducted among adults in India. A total of 260 adults participated in this study. The knowledge, attitude, and behaviour (KAB) questionnaire on oral health was circulated among the adults who were willing to participate in the study after it was explained to them, and the questionnaires were retrieved once they completed. Software R version 3.6 was used to analyse the data of this study. Robust maximum likelihood was utilized for the assessment due to the violation of multivariate normality assumption. For attitude and behaviour domain, a three-factor model was used for measurement model validity and construct validity. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis of the three-factor model for the 26-item KAB questionnaire on oral health gave sufficient goodness-of-fit values and the measurement model exhibited ideal convergent and discriminant validity following model re-specification. The three-factor model was tested to obtain measurement model validity and construct validity for attitude and behaviour domains. The results of this study gave a statistically significant value (p < 0.001), with χ² (df) values of 39 (7) and 28 (11) for attitude and behaviour domains, respectively. Conclusions: The KAB oral health questionnaire used in this study has a valid measurement model and reliable constructs. It was found to be an ideal tool to measure the KAB towards oral health among adults in India.

Background and objectives: The Indian population faces numerous challenges to attain better oral hygiene due to a lack of oral health literacy. For the past 10 years, the prevalence of dental-related conditions in India has become a considerable problem in every state of India. A health-education-based oral health promotion strategy will be an ideal choice for the Indian population instead of endorsing conventional oral health promotion. The use of unsuitable tools to measure may lead to misleading and vague findings that might result in a flawed plan for cessation programs and deceitful effectiveness. Therefore, the research aimed to develop and validate an instrument that can assess the oral health knowledge, attitude and behavior (KAB) of adults in India. Materials and Methods: This study was carried among adults in India, who live in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. A questionnaire was fabricated and then validated using content, face, as well as construct. The knowledge domain was validated using item response theory analysis (IRT), whereas exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to validate the behavior domain and attitude. Results: Four principal sections, i.e., knowledge, attitude, demography and behavior, were used to fabricate a questionnaire following validation. Following analysis of item response theory on the knowledge domain, all analyzed items in the domain were within the ideal range of difficulty and discrimination. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.65 for the attitude and 0.66 for the behavior domain. A Bartlett’s test of sphericity was conducted and demonstrated that outcomes for both domains were highly significant (p < 0.001). The factor analysis resulted in three factors with a total of eight items in the attitude domain and three factors with a total of seven items in the behavior domain depicting satisfactory factor loading (>0.3). Across the three factors, i.e., knowledge, attitude and behavior, internal consistency reliability was tested using Cronbach’s alpha, and the values obtained were 0.67, 0.87, 0.67, and 0.88, respectively. Conclusions: The findings of this study that assessed validity and reliability showed that the developed questionnaire had an acceptable psychometric property for measuring oral health KAB among adults in India.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of a set of sociodemographic and habits measures on estimating periodontal disease among south Indian adults. This cross-sectional study was carried out among 288 individuals above 18 years old in Tamil Nadu, India. The outcome of the study was periodontal disease, measured by WHO criteria. The covariates were age, ethnicity, smoking and alcohol habit. The assessment of factors predicting periodontal disease was carried out by multiple logistic regression analysis using R version 3.6.1. The demographic factors like age group (AOR = 3.56; 95% CI 1.69–7.85), ethnicity (AOR = 6.07; 95% CI 2.27–18.37), non-alcoholic (AOR = 0.31; 95% CI 0.13–0.64) and non-smoking (AOR = 0.33; 95% CI 0.15–0.67) were found to be associated with the outcome. The maximum log likelihood estimate value was −30.5 and AIC was 385 for the final model, respectively. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the periodontal disease was 0.737. We can conclude that sociodemographic factors and habits were useful for predicting periodontal diseases.