TITLE:
Dental Anxiety among Danish Adults—Comparison of Recent Website Data and Older Telephone Data with Government Demographic Statistics
AUTHORS:
Rod Moore, Peter Bering
KEYWORDS:
Dental Anxiety, Prevalence, Characteristics, Epidemiological Methods, Subject Recruitment, Web Surveys, Telephone Surveys, Demographic Representativity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Stomatology,
Vol.7 No.12,
December
29,
2017
ABSTRACT: Background: Survey quality, in particular sampling, coverage, and issues of representativity, are important for valid and reliable conclusions from epidemiological data. Dental anxiety (DA) still challenges dental clinicians since it is synonymous with care avoidance. Accurate estimates of DA are important for public health. Aims were to 1) assess demographic representativity (age/ gender) of a 2013-14 web survey and a 1992-93 telephone survey about DA in Danish adults aged 16 - 80 yr using government statistics; 2) assess DA frequency and characteristics from web survey data (N = 701); and 3) compare web results with 1993 results. Method: Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) measured DA, while other items revealed gender, age, education, dentist avoidance, and three types of negative dentist behaviors. Analyses used frequencies, Chi- square, odds ratios (OR) and ANOVAs. Results: Samples from 1992-3 and 2013-14 were not significantly different by demographics or government statistics, with the exception of low numbers in ages 16 - 19 yr for both surveys. Ages 20 - 29 yr and 30 - 39 yr were slightly overrepresented in telephone data, while ages 50 - 59 yo were in web data. Mean DAS scores were 7.5 for both 1992-3 and 2013-14. Extreme DA (DAS 20-15) increased from 4.2% to 5.3%, while high DA (DAS ≥ 13) increased from 6% to 9.5%. Main 2013-14 associations with DAS ≥ 15 were women (OR = 4.7), avoiding dentists (OR = 11.4) and negative dentist behaviors (OR = 4.2 - 6.7) similar to 1992-3 data. Conclusion: Web survey results from this convenience sample were demographically representative for adults 20 - 80 yo and showed small changes in DA after 20 years. Future strategies regarding survey of teenagers require special attention.