leila mostafaei

Anterior crossbite is one of the most common orthodontic problems. Parents' level of awareness determines how they deal with their child's anterior crossbite problems. In the present study, the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of parents of primary school children about anterior crossbite was evaluated.

In this cross-sectional descriptive study, a questionnaire was designed to assess parents' knowledge, attitude and practice of children's anterior crossbite.  Face validity was confirmed through interviews, content validity was assessed by CVR calculation and construct validity was assessed using exploratory factor analysis. The questionnaire was provided to 250 parents and its construct validity and reliability were calculated using SPSS software. The final questionnaire was completed by another 250 parents to assess parents' knowledge, attitude and practice.

Based on factor analysis, the questionnaire was classified into 6 domains. The average scores in the areas of "treatment awareness", "complication awareness", "treatment attitude", "diagnosis attitude", "treatment practice" and "prevention performance" are equal to 19.48 ± 3.33 (out of 25), 10.19 ± 2.01 (out of 15), 7.53 ± 2.79 (out of 20), 9.83 ± 2.31 (out of 15), 19.4 ± 3.46 (out of 25), and 9.41 ± 2.07 (out of 15), respectively.

Parents had good knowledge, attitude and practice regarding anterior crossbite and only the "attitude towards diagnosis" of parents was relatively low which requires training in this field.