Dental fear and anxiety levels of a University Population in a sample from Yemen

Abstract

The aim was to investigate the dental anxiety and fear levels among students and its relation with their field of study and gender. This cross-sectional study included 720 (360 females and 360 males) which recruited from the collages of Dentistry and Humanities and Social Science in University of Science and Technology in Sana'a, Yemen. Corah�s Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) and Dental fear survey (DFS) was used to measure dental anxiety and fear among the study population. Spearman's correlation was used to analyze the association among the dental anxiety measurements or between DAS and DFS tests. Chi-square tests and linear regression analyses were used to determine the associations between dental anxiety or fear and contextual variables. Out of 720 students enrolled, 713 students (354 males and 359 females) completed and returned the questionnaire having response rate of 99.03%. The association between dental anxiety measurements or the DAS and DFS were statistically significant (p < 0.01). Dental students were less anxious and fear than humanities and social sciences students (p < 0.05). Females were more anxious and fear than males (p < 0.05). Dental anxiety and fear was more associated with female than other contextual variables [for fear (OR = 1.14, p = 0.001); for anxiety (OR = 1.90, p = 0.001)]. Dental anxiety was found to be related to dental fear. Male students were less anxious and fear than female students. Students from medical background faculties were less anxious and fear.