Dental Fears and its Relationship to Personality Variables Among Kuwait University Undergraduates

Abstract

This study aimed at determining the prevalence of dental fear among Kuwait University undergraduates in relation to certain gender specific personality traits concerning dental anxiety, neuroticism and obsession, and to discover the procedures that evoked most dental fear, for developing the dental fear inventory. The target population comprised two independent samples of 1266 and 638 students, respectively, of both sexes in the age range of 18-25 years, who were administered standard scales. These included Arabic Dental Fear Inventory (ADFI), Corah’s Dental Anxiety Scale (CDAS), Dental Anxiety Self-Test (DAST), Kuwait University Anxiety and Pessimism Scales (KUAS,KUPS), EPQ Neuroticism (EPQ-N), and Arabic Obsessive-Compulsive Scales, as they presented satisfactory psychometric properties. The study revealed item total correlation range of 0.28 - 0.77, and the factor structure of Dental Fear Inventory presented six factors for males and five for females. Our findings showed Dental Fear Inventory correlated 0.58 on Corah Dental Anxiety Scale and 0.61 on Dental Anxiety Self-Test, concurrently supporting the validity of Dental Fear Inventory. Moreover, the Cronbach coefficient for Dental Fears Inventory was found to be 0.96, split-half coefficient 0.94, and re-test coefficient of 0.89. Overall, the dental fear significantly correlated with dental anxiety, anxiety, obsession, pessimism and neuroticism, with significant difference in personality traits between higher versus lower groups in dental fears, with those higher in dental anxiety exhibiting tendencies of dental fear, anxiety, pessimism, neuroticism and obsession. The factor structure of the personality variables revealed two factors (Dental anxiety and fears/neuroticism). Gender-wise, the dental fear prevalence rates were found to be 13.4% (females) and 9.8% (males), with females scoring higher in dental fears than the males. Also, the dental procedures that evoked greatest fear were not being numb enough, pain, drill, loosing teeth, dentist going wrong, gum bleeding, nerve treatment, gum surgery, tooth damage, teeth drilling, and operation failure. These findings provided the empirical basis for requisite theoretical and practical implications of dental fears vis-à-vis personality traits, and also for making some recommendations.