WHO IS DENTALLY ANXIOUS - CONCORDANCE BETWEEN MEASURES OF DENTAL ANXIETY

Studies of the prevalence of dental anxiety in general population samp les have produced estimates which range from a low of 2.6% to a high o f 20.4%. It is not clear whether these reflect real differences among populations or whether they are the result of the use of different mea sures and different cutoff points. We undertook a large scale mail sur vey of dental anxiety in a random sample of the adult population livin g in Metropolitan Toronto designed to assess the performance of and ag reement between three measures. These were Corah's DAS, the single ite m used by Milgrom and colleagues in Seattle and the ten-point fear sca le used by Gatchel. These measures and their published cut-off points produced prevalence estimates of 10.9%, 23.4% and 8.2% respectively. W hile there was a significant association between scores on pairs of me asures the agreement between them was far from perfect. Kappa values r anged from 0.37 to 0.56, indicating only fair to moderate agreement be yond chance. There was evidence to indicate that the dentally anxious subjects identified by each measure differed according to certain beha vioural and other characteristics. The results of the study suggest th e need to revisit the issue of measurement in studies of dental anxiet y.