Denture wearer's perception of ambient care, part 1: validation of a preliminary scale.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the present study was to investigate if a preliminary Ambient Care Scale (ACS), intended to measure ambient care in complete denture wearers, had acceptable reliability and validity.


METHODS
A sample of 117 patients who had received complete dentures in both jaws in the period 1997-2005 at Bergen School of Dentistry completed a questionnaire containing eight items regarding the patients' relationship with the student and clinical personnel, to what extent they were informed and consulted during treatment, waiting times and cost. In addition, information was gathered regarding demographics, The Psychological General Well-Being index (WHO-5), global ambient care, satisfaction with dentures and how patients viewed their oral health.


RESULTS
Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.76 for the ACS, indicating acceptable internal consistency. From principle component analysis, three factors were extracted, correlating with ACS with coefficients of 0.72, 0.58 and 0.59, respectively. Acceptable construct validity was indicated by the fact that items were formulated by common agreement among three experienced prosthodontists, the extremely low frequency of missing data (<2%) and that ACS, as expected, was able to discriminate between patients satisfied and dissatisfied with their dentures (p = 0.005) and oral health (p = 0.042), but not between those who had high or low WHO-5 scores (p = 0.77).


CONCLUSIONS
The ACS appears to have acceptable psychometric properties.
Department of Clinical Dentistry, Section of Prosthodontics, University of Bergen, Norway. einar.berg@odont.uib.no
Einar
E
Berg
Harald
H
Gjengedal
Morten Eirik
ME
Berge
Tordis Agnete
TA
Trovik
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003778:Dentures / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009664:Norway; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires