Correlates of dental anxiety in a university population

The purpose of this study was to identify correlates of dental anxiety in university students. Dental anxiety was measured by means of the Corah Dental Anxiety Scale. Information about the students' dental attitudes, perceptions, and past dental experiences was collected by a written questionnaire administered to an approximately 13 percent random sample of all full-time students. The response rate was 27.3 percent (n = 846). The mean dental anxiety score for the entire study group was 8.77; mean scores for men (8.44) and women (9.10) were significantly different. Of the 18 independent variables studied, seven were found to be significantly associated with dental anxiety scores: sex, frequency of childhood visits to the dentist, childhood experience with dentists, frequency of mothers' visits to a dentist, perceived number of types of services required, symptoms as reason for last dental visit, and number of preventive actions taken prior day. As a group, the independent variables explained 22.8 percent of the observed variation in dental anxiety scores. When the amount of variation which was explained by each of the independent variables was considered separately four variables were found to be significant: childhood experience with dentists, gender, attitudes toward dentists, and number of preventive actions taken the prior day. Further studies are required to identify additional antecedents of dental anxiety in university students. These studies should focus on the ability of the antecedents to explain observed variation in anxiety levels.