Cargando…

Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Dental fear is a prevalent problem that can lead to poor dental health. The Kleinknecht’s Dental Fear Survey (DFS) is one of the used scales to assess dental fear. The present study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Lebanese Arabic version of the DFS (DFS-A) and to dete...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kassem El Hajj, Hiba, Fares, Youssef, Abou-Abbas, Linda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8683824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34922500
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-02015-y
_version_ 1784617500884860928
author Kassem El Hajj, Hiba
Fares, Youssef
Abou-Abbas, Linda
author_facet Kassem El Hajj, Hiba
Fares, Youssef
Abou-Abbas, Linda
author_sort Kassem El Hajj, Hiba
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Dental fear is a prevalent problem that can lead to poor dental health. The Kleinknecht’s Dental Fear Survey (DFS) is one of the used scales to assess dental fear. The present study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Lebanese Arabic version of the DFS (DFS-A) and to determine the optimal cut-off to identify dental fear as well as the correlates of dental fear in a group of Lebanese adults dental patients. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among a group of 442 dental patients (18–65 years) recruited at 29 dental clinics from March to June 2019. Patients completed a questionnaire including questions about demographic characteristics, previous bad dental experience, trauma’s experience period, the sensation of nausea during dental treatment, the DFS-A scale, the Lebanese Arabic version of the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS-A), and a general question about dental fear. RESULTS: DFS-A revealed evidence of adequate psychometric properties. DFS-A scale demonstrated high internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha = 0.93). Test–retest reliability assessment demonstrated strong reproducibility of the DFS-A scale score (ICC = 0.92 with 95% CI (0.83–0.96), p value < 0.0001 (N = 30). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of the DFS-A reflecting fear associated with specific dental stimuli and procedures, patterns of dental avoidance and anticipatory anxiety, and physiologic arousal during dental treatment. A significant correlation was found between DFS-A and the MDAS-A indicating a good convergent validity. The optimal cut-off point to identify patients with and without dental fear is 41. Considering this cut-off score, the prevalence of dental fear in our sample was reported at 33.8%. Multivariable analysis showed that having previous scary and painful dental experiences, a sensation of nausea during treatment, and having dental anxiety were identified as predictors of dental fear. CONCLUSION: The adapted Arabic version of the DFS (DFS-A) is a valid tool to evaluate dental fear among Lebanese adult patients.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8683824
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-86838242021-12-20 Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study Kassem El Hajj, Hiba Fares, Youssef Abou-Abbas, Linda BMC Oral Health Research BACKGROUND: Dental fear is a prevalent problem that can lead to poor dental health. The Kleinknecht’s Dental Fear Survey (DFS) is one of the used scales to assess dental fear. The present study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Lebanese Arabic version of the DFS (DFS-A) and to determine the optimal cut-off to identify dental fear as well as the correlates of dental fear in a group of Lebanese adults dental patients. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among a group of 442 dental patients (18–65 years) recruited at 29 dental clinics from March to June 2019. Patients completed a questionnaire including questions about demographic characteristics, previous bad dental experience, trauma’s experience period, the sensation of nausea during dental treatment, the DFS-A scale, the Lebanese Arabic version of the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS-A), and a general question about dental fear. RESULTS: DFS-A revealed evidence of adequate psychometric properties. DFS-A scale demonstrated high internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha = 0.93). Test–retest reliability assessment demonstrated strong reproducibility of the DFS-A scale score (ICC = 0.92 with 95% CI (0.83–0.96), p value < 0.0001 (N = 30). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of the DFS-A reflecting fear associated with specific dental stimuli and procedures, patterns of dental avoidance and anticipatory anxiety, and physiologic arousal during dental treatment. A significant correlation was found between DFS-A and the MDAS-A indicating a good convergent validity. The optimal cut-off point to identify patients with and without dental fear is 41. Considering this cut-off score, the prevalence of dental fear in our sample was reported at 33.8%. Multivariable analysis showed that having previous scary and painful dental experiences, a sensation of nausea during treatment, and having dental anxiety were identified as predictors of dental fear. CONCLUSION: The adapted Arabic version of the DFS (DFS-A) is a valid tool to evaluate dental fear among Lebanese adult patients. BioMed Central 2021-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8683824/ /pubmed/34922500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-02015-y Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Kassem El Hajj, Hiba
Fares, Youssef
Abou-Abbas, Linda
Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title_full Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title_short Psychometric evaluation of the Lebanese Arabic version of the Dental Fear Survey: a cross-sectional study
title_sort psychometric evaluation of the lebanese arabic version of the dental fear survey: a cross-sectional study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8683824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34922500
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-02015-y
work_keys_str_mv AT kassemelhajjhiba psychometricevaluationofthelebanesearabicversionofthedentalfearsurveyacrosssectionalstudy
AT faresyoussef psychometricevaluationofthelebanesearabicversionofthedentalfearsurveyacrosssectionalstudy
AT abouabbaslinda psychometricevaluationofthelebanesearabicversionofthedentalfearsurveyacrosssectionalstudy