Beliefs about professional ethics, dentist-patient communication, control and trust among fearful dental patients: the factor structure of the revised Dental Beliefs Survey

• Published in: Acta odontologica Scandinavica Vol. 62; no. 1; p. 21
• Main Authors: Kvale, Gerd, Milgrom, Peter, Getz, Tracy, Weinstein, Philip, Johnsen, Tom Backer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.02.2004
• Subjects: Adult; Chi-Square Distribution; Clinical Competence; Communication; Dental Anxiety - psychology; Dentist-Patient Relations; Empathy; Ethics, Dental; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Female; Humans; Internal-External Control; Male; Personality Assessment; Psychometrics - statistics & numerical data; Trust; Empirical Approach; Professional Patient Relationship
• ISSN: 0001-6357
• DOI: 10.1080/00016350310005780

The revised version of the Dental Beliefs Survey (DBS-R), intended to measure three dimensions of the patient dentist relationship as perceived by the patient, namely Ethics, Communication and Control, was tested in a confirmatory factor analysis. Five different models for the internal structure of the questionnaire were tested. The final model, a 5-factor solution, basically including the 3 assumed dimensions as well as the re-introduced dimension Trust covered in the first version of the DBS plus a global factor including all items, yielded an acceptable fit. This model also omits 4 items from DBS-R, i.e. items 3, 11, 18, and 28. The reduced DBS-R is recommended for clinical use when assessing the patient's perception of the relationship to the dentist, including both trust and ethical behavior.