title: The willingness of US pediatric dentists to use atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) with their patients: a conjoint analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) was developed as an affordable, patient-friendly dental caries management procedure that does not need extensive operator training or special skills. The aim of this study was to determine factors that influence the decision to use ART using an innovative marketing research technique known as conjoint analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  A conjoint survey was completed by 723 members of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. Three factors (age of the child, level of cooperation, type of insurance) were varied across three levels to create nine patient scenarios. The weights that practitioners placed on these factors in decisions to use ART in treating carious lesions were determined by conjoint analysis. Factors such as lesion location, depth, and extension were fixed in the nine clinical scenarios.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Seven-hundred twenty-three pediatric dentists completed the survey (32 percent). Age of the child was the most important factor in pediatric dentists' decisions to use ART (46 percent) compared with level of cooperation (41 percent) and type of insurance coverage (11 percent). For the age factor, the age of 2 years had the greatest utility (0.55) compared with age 4 (-0.09) and age 6 (-0.46). For types of insurance coverage, having no insurance (0.124) had the greatest utility compared with having public insurance (-0.119).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although insurance coverage was the least important among the factors, being without insurance, being very young, and being uncooperative was the scenario where pediatric dentists most favored ART when making trade offs between different factors using the conjoint design.
authors.affiliation: Oral Health Research and Promotion, Al Quds University, Jerusalem, Palestine; Public Policy Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
authors.forename: Elham Talib
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Kateeb
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gaeth
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Damiano
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Momany
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Kanellis
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Weber-Gasparoni
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ansley
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D057087:Dental Atraumatic Restorative Treatment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003815:Dentists / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010377:Pediatric Dentistry; D014481:United States
keywords: access to health care; conjoint analysis; decision making; dental atraumatic restorative treatment; pediatric dentistry