This study investigates the extent to which dentists giving treatment
are able to evaluate the (changes in) child patients' levels of fear,
based on a comparison between direct behavior observations of a group
of highly anxious children during sequential dental visits and video o
bservations of the same group made by two independent evaluators using
the measuring instrument described by VENHAM et nl. (9). A significan
t difference was found between the fear scores given by the two dentis
ts giving treatment and also between their fear scores and those by th
e independent observers. Both the fear and behavior scores of the two
dentists giving treatment, however, clearly correlated with the fear s
cores of the observers. It is concluded that in this study the two den
tists giving treatment were unable to award an unbiased fear score for
each treatment given to a child but it was not possible to show that
the bias was caused by experiences from previous sessions with the sam
e child. After video training dentists giving treatment are capable of
giving a picture of changes in children's fear levels during sequenti
al dental visits.