US service members' satisfaction with family dental care

This paper reports on U.S. service members' satisfaction with family dental care. The data come from a 26-site survey of active duty Army, Navy, Marin e, and Air Force personnel conducted from April 1994 to January 1995. Of 12 ,050 respondents (81% response rate) to a prestratified, random sample, 4,4 12 had at least one child younger than age 21 or a nonmilitary spouse and a nswered 16 questions on satisfaction with family dental care. We derived si mple distributions acid an overall composite satisfaction score using facto r analysis. Composite scores, transformed into a continuous variable with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10, were regressed on respondent d emographic and other factors to determine which factors influence overall s atisfaction. Descriptive results show high satisfaction with family dental care. Regression results show that overall satisfaction varies with sex, br anch of service, perceived barriers to dental care, and family dental insur ance status. Because this survey was conducted before the change to the cur rent dental insurance contractor, these findings may not reflect current se rvice members' satisfaction with family dental care.