Development of a persian version of the children’s fear survey schedule-dental subscale (cfss-ds) among 8-12 year-old female students in Tehran

Abstract

Background and Aims: Children’s Fear Survey Schedule- Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) is considered as the most popular instrument available to assess dental fear in children. The aim of this study was to develop a Persian version of the CFSS-DS among 8-12 year-old female children resident in Tehran. Materials and Methods: At first, the questionnaire was translated in Farsi and  back translated in English afterwards. While, the back translated version was confirmed, we considered the Persian version as the final instrument. Content validity and reliability of the questionnaire was assessed. We used test-retest method to evaluate the reliability, 287 female students aged 8 to 12 from 7 schools in 6th district of education ministry of Tehran were interviewed two times with interval of seven days. In addition, the infraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and percentage of agreement were calculated. The score of dental fear was measured with range of 13 to 65 and changed to a number between 0 and 100. The relationship between dental fear score and the independent variables including age, history of hospitalization, last medical visit, and history of dental treatment were evaluated using the linear regression models. Results: The mean score of dental fear was calculated 20.52. The score of dental fear was significantly associated with the last medical visit (P=0.04) and past dental history (P<0.001). The percentage of agreement was more than 80% for all the questions. In each question, Kappa was evaluated as moderate to good and ICC was good to very good (more than 0.4). Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrated that the Persian version of CFSS-DS was valid and reliable among 8-12 year-old children.

Keywords

• Psychometrics
• Dental anxiety
• Child