Attitude & Preference of Children Aged 4 to 12 Years and Their Parents about the Type of Attire and Gender of Dentists

Objective: Dentist's gender and appearance, significantly, affect the child's acceptance and makes him cooperate better during the treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the preference of children aged 4 to 12 years regarding attire and gender of the dentist.

Methods: Four hundred children aged 4 to 12 years were randomly selected from the pediatric department of Kerman Dental Faculty, then they were given a questionnaire that included demographic information and eight images of male and female dentists with different attire. The parent and the child were asked to choose the picture of their desired dentist; After collecting the data, SPSS 26 software was used to check the data. To describe the data, descriptive statistics (percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviation) and to analyze the data, Chi-Square tests, T-Test, ANOVA, and Tukey's test were used.

Results: Children participating in this study included 49.3% boys and 50.7 % girls with their parents (18.75% fathers, and 81.25% mothers). The findings showed that 30.75% of children and 36 % of parents chose a dentist with colored scrubs and fantasy patterns. Also, most children (66.75%) and parents (72.5%) wanted to be treated by a female dentist. Certainly, most children preferred to be treated by a dentist of the same gender (P=0.0001).

Conclusion: the majority of Children and parents generally preferred female dentists, but many children tended to choose dentists of the same gender. most girls and parents chose cartoon attire, and most boys chose white coats.