ASSESSING AND MODELING THE FACTOR THAT AFFECTED DENTAL CARIES AMONG PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN BACHOK, KELANTAN, MALAYSIA

Abstract

ABSTRACT

A prevalence study of dental caries was undertaken in 5-6 year-old preschool children from Bachok District, Kelantan. In this study, sample consists of 382 children were collected in order to find the factor that affected the dental caries among children. Dental caries was examined visually by two dentists from School of Dental Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia and also the related information of the observations was recorded through the provided research form. The results showed that the prevalence of dental caries amongst 5-6-year old, is about 63.1% (high caries category). The increasing prevalence of dental caries among preschool children in Bachok need special systematic dental health education programmes. From the descriptives study, it shows only 5.2% children (no caries category), 11.3% (low caries category) and 20.4 % (moderate caries category). In this study, three techniques were used in order to find the factor that associated with caries status. The first technique by Cluster Analysis (CA), second is by Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) analysis and the third is a Multiple Logistics Regression (MLR) analysis toward specific variables which will be discussed later in the next section. This paper focused on finding on dental caries factors modeling status scenario in Bachok, Kelantan. 

Key-words: Structural equation modeling, dental caries, response surface methodology, preschool children and cluster analysis.