No abstract

The 10-item Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire–Revised (PRAQ-R) is a widely used instrument to assess and identify pregnancy-specific anxiety in nulliparous women. It has good psychometric values and predictive validity for birth and childhood outcomes. Nonetheless, the PRAQ-R is not designed for use in parous women, as particularly one item of the questionnaire is not relevant for women who gave birth before. We tested the factorial and scalar invariance of a modified PRAQ-R2 across nulliparous and parous women with an adapted item to fit both groups of pregnant women. A longitudinal study among 1144 pregnant women (n = 608 nulliparous and n = 536 parous) with two repeated measures of the PRAQ-R2 was used to test for measurement invariance of the instrument. Results show metric and scalar invariance, indicating that the PRAQ-R2 measures similar constructs on the same scale for all pregnant women at two different times during pregnancy. We conclude that the PRAQ-R2 can be used, compared, or combined in a sample of nulliparous and parous women.

Reducing dental fear would increase the number of regular attenders, especially among older age groups. Individuals for whom oral health services have been provided regularly since childhood seem to continue to use these services regularly despite high dental fear.

Oral health-related knowledge of children and their parents seems to be associated with children's oral health-related behavior. Parents' behaviors, but not attitudes, were associated with children's oral health behavior.

Dental fear may have a negative effect on a child's ORHQoL, especially on social and emotional well-being. Positive minor treatment experiences might weaken this effect.