ATTITUDES TOWARD DENTISTS AND THE DENTAL-CARE SYSTEM AMONG THE MIDDLE-AGED AND THE ELDERLY IN HONG-KONG

A sample of 398 35-44-yr-old and 559 65-74-yr-old Hong Kong Chinese we re interviewed by trained interviewers using a structured questionnair e in an oral health survey conducted in 1991. The present analysis aim ed to describe the dental-care-seeking behaviour and attitudes of thes e subjects. It was found that 43% of the younger and 23% of the older age group had visited a dentist within the past year. More than half o f the elderly and a quarter of the adults had not been to a dentist fo r 3 yr or more, and the main reason given by these subjects was that t hey felt that nothing was wrong. The vast majority of the subjects con sulted a dentist only when they had toothache or other dental problems . Less than 20% of the 35-44-yr-olds visited a dentist for a check-up or teeth cleaning, and these subjects were described as having a preve ntion-oriented attitude toward oral care. The result of a logistic reg ression analysis showed that there was a higher chance for subjects to have this attitude if they had dental programme coverage, perceived t heir teeth to be good, had better dental health knowledge, had a more positive dental attitude, and were less anxious about dental care. How ever, the influence of these factors was quite weak, because the overa ll percentage of correct classification of the model was 83.7% and the sensitivity was only 23.3%.