Knowledge, Attitude, and Barriers to Fluoride Application as a Preventive Measure among Oral Health Care Providers

Table 6

Logistic regression model for dentists who believed (dependent variable) that restorative therapy should take precedence over preventative therapy.

Variables	Agree (%)	Disagree (%)	Not sure (%)	Odds ratio	CI (95%)
Gender
Males	16.5	78.7	4.9	−0.30	−1.13–0.53	0.48
Females (reference)	16.0	76.5	7.4	—	—	—
Age group (years)
≤30	21.2	72.7	6.1	0.58	−1.19–2.35	0.52
31–45	12.0	85.2	2.8	0.05	−1.36–1.46	0.95
≥46 (reference)	16.7	75.0	8.3	—	—	—
Region of undergraduate dental education
North America	11.1	88.9	0.0	0.67	−0.52–1.86	0.27
Europe	13.9	80.6	5.6	0.85	−0.32–2.02	0.16
Asia	1.8	94.6	3.6	1.28	−0.51–2.61	0.06
Middle East (reference)	26.0	68.3	5.8	—	—	—
Specialty
General dental practitioners	21.2	72.3	6.6	−0.03	−1.31–1.26	0.97
Specialists caring for children	7.7	89.7	2.6	0.21	−1.01–1.43	0.74
Other specialists (reference)	12.3	84.6	3.1	—	—	—
Years of practice
≥10	20.1	74.3	5.6	−0.66	−1.89–0.57	0.29
<10 (reference)	10.4	84.4	5.2	—	—	—
Area of practice
Rural	14.3	78.6	7.1	0.06	−0.73–0.84	0.88
Urban (reference)	17.2	77.7	5.1	—	—	—
Work place
Primary care clinics	19.8	74.7	5.5	−0.14	−1.48–1.22	0.85
Specialty care clinics	15.8	78.9	5.3	−0.30	−1.51–0.90	0.62
Private (reference)	10.5	84.2	5.3	—	—	—
Dental caries cannot be prevented because caries is a multifactorial disease
Agree	32.4	58.1	9.5	−2.34	−3.94–0.73	0.004
Disagree	9.7	88.3	2.1	−1.16	−2.68–0.36	0.14
Not sure (reference)	8.3	75.0	16.7	—	—	—