Clinical and/or epidemiological studies on malocclusion are needed to assess the prevalence of the disease, helping to formulate public policies. As there is the participation of several examiners during the surveys, it is essential that there is standardization during data collection, obtained through the calibration stage.Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the meanings attributed to the calibration step and the way researchers perform it in research on malocclusion. An observational, cross-sectional, descriptive, quantitative and qualitative study was carried out with 50 researchers. An online semi-structured questionnaire was applied via Google Forms to researchers from Higher Education Institutions in Dentistry in the areas of Pediatric Dentistry, Orthodontics and Public Health who carry out clinical and/or epidemiological research focused on malocclusion. To capture the target audience, three search strategies were outlined: a) public consultation on an open data collection platform, in order to identify postgraduate courses in the areas of Pediatric Dentistry, Orthodontics and Collective Health and e-mail from contact of the coordinators, b) bibliographical search of articles published in the last ten years with afocus on epidemiological surveys on malocclusion, c) prior identification of researchers with knowledge in the area of calibration for malocclusion so that they could send an invitation to potential researchers. Data were presented descriptively with frequency distribution tables. Of the 50 volunteers who answered the questionnaire, 24 of them were characterized as the study's target audience, that is, researchers who participated and/or organized a calibration stage for malocclusion, 5 of them from the field of Pediatric Dentistry, 10 from Orthodontics and 9 of Collective Health. The results showed that there is great variability among researchers on how to conduct the calibration step for clinical and/or epidemiological studies on malocclusion. Despite having a consensus on the malocclusion assessment instrument, this was the variable with the most inconsistent response. It is concluded from this work that there is no methodological standardization of the calibration step in clinical and/or epidemiological studies on malocclusion.