Can personality traits influence the assessment of psychosocial impacts of dental aesthetics among adolescents with self-perceived malocclusion?

• Main Author: Wan Hassan, W.N.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Subjects: RK Dentistry
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/17836/1/Personality_trait_PIDA_Data.xlsx; http://eprints.um.edu.my/17836/

Background: Personality is hypothesized to influence patients to seek treatment and affects their expectations and satisfaction with treatment outcome. This study examined whether adolescents’ personality traits could influence assessment of the psychosocial impact of dental aesthetics (PIDA) questionnaire by mediating or moderating the effects of self-perceived malocclusion as measured on the PIDA. Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were given to schoolchildren from five randomly selected schools in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. These questionnaires comprised the Aesthetic Component of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need to assess self-perceived malocclusion; the Malaysian PIDA questionnaire to measure the oral health-related quality of life related to altered smile aesthetics; and the Big Five Inventory to measure personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness). Rasch analysis using Winsteps was done to convert raw ordinal data to interval scores. Mediation and moderation analyses used SPSS with the PROCESS macro. Results: Questionnaires submitted by 241 subjects were analyzed. Adolescents with self-perceived malocclusion had lower dental self-confidence (DSC) and experienced higher social impact, psychological impact and aesthetic concern than did those without self-perceived malocclusion. Only interaction of self-perceived malocclusion and Openness on DSC was marginally detected as significant (p=0.05; 95% CI between -0.87 and -0.01). However, the moderating effect of Openness was small, accounting for only 1% of the variance in the model tested (∆R2=0.01). Other personality traits neither mediated nor moderated the relationship between self-perceived malocclusion and PIDA. Conclusion: Assessment of the PIDA among adolescents with self-perceived malocclusion was not profoundly mediated or moderated by personality traits. Although Openness in the adolescents’ personality was detected as a moderator, the effect size was small and clinically insignificant.