Abstract
Purpose: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the association between personality traits, dental anxiety and socioeconomic profile with the dental myths among adults in Chennai City, India.
Methods: A pilot study was conducted among 90 adults aged 18 years and above by multistage random sampling methodology across the socioeconomic groups. The final sample size was found to be 162. A validated and a reliable, bilingual, self-administered questionnaire consisting of four sections namely 1. The demographic details, 2. Personality traits, 3. Modified Dental Anxiety and 4. A 26-item dental myth questionnaire. The collected data was analysed using SPSS version 20.0 and Chi -square test, One way ANOVA and correlations were done and a p-value
Results: Dental myth scores was found to be more in the middle social class, followed by the lower and higher social class and this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.21). The personality traits and dental anxiety were found to be weakly correlated with dental myth scores.
Conclusion: The startling results of the study have shown no relationship between socioeconomic status, dental anxiety, personality traits with the occurrence of dental myths.
)