Dental caries and their association with socioeconomic characteristics, oral hygiene practices and eating habits among preschool children in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — the NOPLAS project

Table 3 Associations between dental caries and univariate socioeconomic variables among nursery children in Abu Dhabi. N = 147

Independent variable	Groups	%	Mean dmft (SD)	P-value^a	Mean SIC (SD)	P-value^b
Father’s education level	High school or below	12.6	2.9 (3.6)	0.062	5.3 (3.3)	0.065
Father’s education level	University degree	87.4	1.2 (2.5)	0.062	4.6 (3.2)	0.065
Mother’s education level	High school or below	20.8	3.2 (3.7)	0.000	5.4 (3.40)	0.001
	University degree	79.2	0.9 (2.2)	0.000	4.5 (3.0)	0.001
Self-rated financial status	Lower middle income	2.2	2.5 (3.5)		5.0 (−)	0.775
	Middle income	62.6	1.6 (3.0)	0.651	5.4 (0.6)
	Higher middle income	33.8	1.1 (2.1)		3.9 (2.2)
	Wealthy	1.4	–		–
Parents’ perception of their child’s dental status	Very good	41.5	1.0 (1.8)	0.000	3.9 (2.10)	0.000
	Satisfactory	51.0	1.1 (2.3)		4.5 (2.9)
	Dissatisfactory	6.8	6.9 (4.1)		6.9 (4.1)
	Very dissatisfactory	0.7	–		0 (0)

Abbreviations: dmft decayed, missing and filled teeth index, SIC significant caries index, SD standard deviation
^aThe significance of the dmft scores as measured by the Mann-Whitney U test or Kruskal-Wallis test as appropriate
^bthe significance of SIC scores as measured by Pearson chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests as appropriate

ISSN: 1472-6831