Abstract
Much epidemiological research has been conducted on childhood dental fear and anxiety, but it is difficult to compare these comprehensively due to several parameters such as methodological or criterion variables among the populations surveyed. To enable comparisons with other countries, in the present study the Dental Subscale of Children's Fear Survey Schedule (the CFSS-DS) was used, a well-known instrument showing good reliability and validity and used in several countries in the study of childhood dental fear. This study described the prevalence of dental fear in Japanese, and examined its relationship with trait anxiety and willingness to visit a dentist. The following results were obtained.
1) The Japanese version of CFSS-DS showed high reliability and validity.
2) Twenty percent of Japanese school children were dentally fearful. Girls were more likely to report to have dental fear than boys.
3) Children who had never visited a dentist were more likely to report to have higher dental fear than those who had visited.
4) The more fear the children had, the higher trait anxiety they had.
5) Japanese school children had relatively higher dental fear than Scandinavian children, but lower fear than that of children in the US, Singapore and China.
