Black-white difference in oral hygiene performance test scores. A preliminary finding.

This paper describes OHPT (Oral Hygiene Performance Test) which was used to measure race differences between African-American and European-American elderly 65 years old and above in performance of daily oral hygiene activities. A total of 80 community-dwelling subjects of which 43 were African-American and 37 European-American participated in the study which involved completion of a battery of functional status measurements including the OHPT. The instrument detected differences in performance as recorded by the length of time to complete each of the 17-items of OHPT. The instrument, the Oral Hygiene Performance Test, is a direct observation measure which objectively quantifies the ability to perform oral hygiene and thus reduces subjective evaluation.