Objectives To design a new assessment of dental anxiety for 5-year-old children that takes less than five minutes to complete, for use in primary care or community settings, that requires minimal training for assessment administrator and has favourable psychometric properties. Setting Primary schools in Cheshire, UK.
Method Two studies were conducted. The first study required a sample of 31 five-year-old children to rank order five diagrammatic picture cards denoting emotions of very happy to very sad, including a neutral emotion card. The second study invited children to post 12 gender-matched pictures of children receiving dental advice, examination and treatment procedures in a dental surgery into four post boxes arranged in rank order and labelled clearly, with the face pictures in the rank order confirmed in study 1 (omitting the neutral choice option).
Results In study 1, consistent rank ordering was obtained with four faces (very happy-happy-sad-very sad). Neutral point was omitted due to inconsistent ranking. Study 2 children responded enthusiastically to instructions of new assessment and fully completed the test. A good association was demonstrated between the new measure and the gold standard' projective measure picture test of Klinberg1. Reliability of measure was moderate.
Conclusions This new assessment appeared to assess dental anxiety in young children without causing apparent distress in respondents and warrants further testing to determine additional measurement properties.
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