Evaluation of the Quality of the Pictorial Book ‘Dana and Dentistry’ from Preschool Children’s Viewpoint

Pictures can be useful in children’s learning processes and strengthen their thinking and imagination. It is possible to teach new concepts to children using pictorial books. The pictorial book ‘Dana and Dentistry’ has been designed by a pedodontist by getting assistance from a painter. The present study aimed to qualitatively evaluate the pictures in this book by a target group, i.e., the preschool children.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 3 kindergartens in Kerman-Iran in 2019 in order to examine children's views on the images of 18 chapters of the book designed by pediatric dentists "Dana and Dentistry". The children replied to the question on each chapter after viewing the pictures in each chapter of the book on a pictorial checklist by color painting. Multivariate analysis of variance and binomial analysis were used to analyze the data and a significance level of less than 0.05 was considered.

In the present study, 79 children aged 4 to 6 years participated, 48.1% and 51.9% of the children were female and male, respectively. The mean overall score of the 18 questions on the checklist was 16.19 ± 0.18, and the mean correct response to each question on the checklist was >60%, which was significant (P=0.0001).

The pictorial book ‘Dana and Dentistry’ has been designed well from more than 60% of children’s viewpoints to teach various dental subjects to children.