APPRAISAL OF DENTAL ANXIETY AND FEAR QUESTIONNAIRES - A REVIEW

This article reviews and assesses six dental anxiety and fear question naires. The construct aimed at by the questionnaires, the data collect ed, their reliability, validity and normative scores are considered. S ome attention is given to the correlations between the questionnaires, their ambiguity, the presence of manuals, and whether the questionnai res tap the three segments distinguishable on theoretical ground in de ntal anxiety/fear. All questionnaires are open to criticism. In the fi nal assessment Kleinknecht's Dental Fear Survey is preferred to Corah' s Dental Anxiety Scale. The latter, however, appears useful in getting a quick impression of anxiety and in evaluative studies. Three recent ly developed questionnaires, Stouthard's Dental Anxiety Inventory, Wei ner's Fear Questionnaire and Morin's Adolescents' Fear of Dental Treat ment Cognitive Inventory are considered promising, but for the last tw o instruments more data, in particular with regard to their validity, are needed. It is concluded that in dental anxiety research more than one questionnaire should be used and that it may be worthwhile to incl ude other, non-anxiety questionnaires as well.