Sociodental approach to the identification of dental treatment-need groups.

The aim of this study was to propose a method that could be used to distinguish significantly different dental treatment-need groups, to assist in planning more appropriate preventive dental health programmes than are now generally available. This involved the use of alternative new measures of dental status in conjunction with an indicator of people's potential, or "propensity" to adopt appropriate dental self-care measures. One important finding, based on a detailed questionnaire and dental examination of a sample population, is that substantial groups have relatively low or medium levels of dental status even though they possess relatively high propensity for self-care measures. A cross-classification of oral health status with the propensity indicator is used to define different treatment-need groups. Significant differences among these groups emerge in relation to various social indicators like age group, gender, region and dental history, and in relation to preventive dental health measures such as dental attendance and efficacy of teeth cleaning. The methodology proposed for identifying such different treatment-need groups could be valuable in devising effective community dental health strategies.

Dental disease and health behaviour: the development of an interactional model.

This paper describes the development of an interactional model in which both the clinical and the socio-psychological aspects of dental disease and its prevention are considered. Clinical and social data were collected from two separate samples, and the interrelationships between antecedent, motivational and preventive health behaviour variables and their influences on each other and on dental health outcomes were measured by regression analyses. A complex pattern of significant interrelationships was revealed, in which direct and indirect influences on dental health and behaviour operated at different levels of intensity and in different combinations, sometimes reinforcing each other but sometimes in conflict. The model could have relevance to a multifactorial approach in health research and, by incorporating additional causal influences, it could be developed into a more effective analytical tool as well as an aid the promotion of dental health.

A new measure of teeth-cleaning efficiency and periodontal disease.

This paper presents a new measure of teeth-cleaning efficiency based on information from a random sample of 400 factory employees and a separate (non-random) sample of some 400 skilled manual workers and their wives. Regression analysis showed that only 1/3 of the variance in calculus levels in the random sample was explained by age, frequency of visits to a dentist, socioeconomic group and smoking habits (other variables tested--gender, date of last dental visit, frequency of teeth-brushing and sugar consumption--were not significant). The corresponding regression for the skilled manual sample gave a broadly similar result, though the proportion of explained variance (1/5) was lower than for the random sample. These results indicated the presence of one or more additional factors, of which teeth-cleaning efficiency is likely to be the most important. A new measure of cleaning efficiency was then constructed by expressing the actual calculus level as a proportion of the level estimated from the regression equation, and deducting this proportion from unity. If this new measure is, indeed, a genuine indicator of teeth-cleaning efficiency, then one should expect it to be an important element in an explanation of the level of periodontal disease, but not of dental caries (which is a resultant essentially of dietary habits). This hypothesis was tested and confirmed by multiple regression analysis. Though the new measure of teeth cleaning efficiency is essentially experimental, and has yet to be validated by clinical testing.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)