Abstract
It is postulated that mothers have some effect on dentists during the treatment of their children. The purpose of this study was to develop a psychological stress response scale for dentists during the treatment of children in order to measure the above mentioned multifarious aspects of psychological stress responses. The subjects were dentists from the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and the Hiroshima University School of Dentistry (22 total). We developed the Psychological Stress Response Scale by using a questionnaire. The reliability of the scale could be seen by its internal consistency and the stability. Its validity was shown by a correlation coefficient and t-test. The t-test was examined by analyzing the contrast of the stress scores during the dental treatment among the two groups of high and low psychological stress of daily life.
The findings were as follows:
1. We analyzed our questionnaire and found the following seven types of stress effecting mothers: overly-demanding mothers, communication deficient mothers, overly strict or nervous mothers, overprotective mothers, overly-concerned mothers, talkative mothers, overly-emotional mothers.
2. The high reliability of this questionnaire was clearly evidenced by its internal consistency and the stability.
3. The validity of the development of the Psychological Stress Response Scale was confirmed by the finding that high stress level groups had high psychological stress scores in dental treatment for children and low stress level groups had low psychological stress scores in dental treatment for children.
These results suggest that this questionnaire was effective for measuring the degree of a mother's effect on a dentist during treatment of their children.
