Perception Regarding Pediatric Dentist's Appearance and Factors Influencing the Child's Responses.

OBJECTIVE: To develop, validate, and apply an instrument for assessing the children's perception regarding pediatric dentist's appearance, based upon the influence of age, gender, previous dental experience, and anxiety. STUDY DESIGN: Images and a nine-item questionnaire were developed. The acceptability, convergent-construct validity, and reliability based on reproducibility and internal consistency were evaluated. The validated instrument was applied in a cross-sectional study, with children (n=120) aged 7-12 years asked to evaluate images of pediatric dentists wearing different dental attire (A:all-white (control); B:printed coat and cap, colorful face mask; C:printed coat, cap and face mask; and D:white coat and cap, printed face mask). Children's age, gender, and previous dental experiences were collected with the guardians. The Children's Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale assessed children's anxiety. Descriptive and inferential statistics were carried out (p<0.05). RESULTS: The instrument showed excellent acceptability, construct validity with moderate and strong correlations (>0.40), satisfactory reproducibility (ICC >0.70), and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficient >0.70). Considering only the attire, the children's perceptions were more positive with the use of attire C and D (p<0.05). Intergroup analysis of all the variables did not identify a statistically significant difference (p>0.05). In the intragroup analysis, compared to attire A: younger children have higher perception scores to attire D; girls, children with previous experience and without anxiety favored attire C and D; and children without previous experience showed no difference in comparison to A but did between B and C (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: The C and D attires promoted a more positive perception of the appearance of a pediatric dentist when compared to A; however, age, gender, previous dental experience, and anxiety did not influence the perception scores.

Does dental trauma influence the social judgment and motivation to seek dental treatment by children and adolescents? Development, validation, and application of an instrument for the evaluation of traumatic dental injuries and their consequences.

BACKGROUND: One's smile clearly plays a significant role in the perception and judgment that others have of one's appearance and personality. AIM: We sought to develop and validate a questionnaire related to the social judgment of children and adolescents and to evaluate, through its application, the perceptions and judgment of children and adolescents regarding their view of different traumatic dental injuries and their consequences (TDIs-Cs) as well as the motivation to seek dental treatment. DESIGN: The aspects of acceptability, discriminative properties, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity were evaluated in the developed questionnaire. A cross-sectional study was conducted involving 100 boys and girls aged 10-15 years. Images of an adolescent male and female were either manipulated or not (control) to create different types of TDI-C (eg, enamel fracture, enamel and dentin fracture, crown colour change, and tooth loss/avulsion). These images were analysed by the participants, using a previously validated questionnaire with a six-positive-point and six-negative-point scale, in relation to their social physical and psychosocial characteristics. The data were analysed with the Friedman, Wilcoxon, and Mann-Whitney tests (P < 0.05). RESULTS: The developed questionnaire presented high acceptability, strong discriminative properties, satisfactory internal consistency, and satisfactory test-retest reliability, but weak construct validity. The presence of TDI-C had a negative effect on all characteristics evaluated (P < 0.001). Tooth loss had the highest level of rejection. Additionally, the presence of TDI-C had a greater negative impact on the aspects of 'starting fights', 'being given a nickname', and 'being ashamed to smile' in males than in females (P < 0.05). Children and adolescents with TDI-C were judged as needing to seek dental treatment (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The questionnaire developed showed properties of validity and reliability in its administration in a child and adolescent population. TDIs-Cs have a negative influence on the social judgment of children and adolescents.

Impact of malocclusion on affective/romantic relationships among young adults.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the extent to which different types of malocclusion influence the development of affective/romantic relationships among young adults of both sexes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 360 men and women ranging in age from 18 years to 25 years. Criteria for exclusion from the sample were the following: participants could not be married, visually impaired, or students of a higher education course in the area of health. In this study, images of young adult men and women in the same age range as that of the evaluators were used. These images were manipulated to create different types of malocclusion: diastema, open bite, crowding, gingival (or gummy) smile, little exposure of teeth. Six groups of images containing six images each were formed and consisted of two experimental images (digitally manipulated) and four control images. These images were provided to the participants, who evaluated them by means of a questionnaire and a visual analog scale. The Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney, chi-square, and Fisher exact tests were used for data analysis. RESULTS: All malocclusions had a negative impact on acceptance by the evaluators for the purposes of affective/romantic relationships, with crowding being the type of malocclusion that led to the highest level of rejection (P < .01). CONCLUSION: Malocclusions have a negative influence on the development of affective/romantic relationships among young adults. Individuals with good occlusion are seen in a more positive light, from the perspective of affective life.