ABSTRACT
AIM: Low attendance and abandonment of dental treatment caused by dental fear varies from 6% to 20%. Various specific scales have been used to evaluate and measure dental fear, like Children´s Fear Survey Schedule - Dental Subscale, which is considered the "gold standard", due to its efficacy and validity. However, not all the studies that have been conducted have performed the Exploratory Factorial and Confirmation Analysis to infer the validity of the scale's content, which is why this study has as its main objective to analyse the confidentiality and validation of this scale. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In a sample of 163 school age children, from 6 to 12 years old, of both genders, from a public school, a Children's Fear Survey Schedule - Dental Subscale was applied to measure dental fear. The internal consistency of the scale was estimated with the Cronbach's alpha, we also performed the Exploratory Factorial Analysis with the method of the main component with Varimax rotation and the Confirmatory Factorial Analysis to confirm the structure of the factors. RESULTS: The Cronbach's alpha was obtained with a .837 (p?.05). The adequate coefficients were determined with the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO = .843) and the Bartlett's test of specificity (?2 = 565,325, p= .000), in which there was a good adequate data, expressing an appropriate and intercorrelation between items or strongly related. The factorial structure showed four factors extracted, 4 factors explain the 53.57% of the accumulated variation; 14 items were above the .40. The statistics of the second and third model obtained adequate values in the statistics of goodness of fit index. CONCLUSION: The Mexican version of the CFSS-DS in the present study gives us data about the adaptation and validation of the dental fear scale of CFSSS-DS by the Exploratory Factorial Analysis through a model of structural equations. This means that this instrument is a trusting and valid tool to measure dental fear in the children's population of Mexico.
