evaluation of knowledge, approaches, and self-efficacy perceptions of turkish dental students about preventive and interceptive orthodontic applications in 2018-2019

Background and aim: preventive orthodontics aids in the formation of normal occlusion. there have been numerous studies on this topic published in the literature. the purpose of this study was to assess final-year dental students' knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy perceptions of preventive and interceptive orthodontic applications (pioa). methods: data were collected from 410 dental students from eight different faculties in this cross-sectional study using a predesigned and validated self-administered, structured questionnaire. spss software was used to analyze the data, which included descriptive statistics, the independent samples t-test, analysis of variance (anova), and the kuder-ritchardson formula 20 (kr-20) reliability coefficient. the statistical significance level was set at p ≤ 0.05. results: the vast majority of students (71.0%) did not believe that they were qualified to perform pioa after graduation. with a rate of 80.5%, preventive treatment was chosen as the most important treatment type. the most correctly answered question, with a score of 92.4%, was about space maintainers. the total score was calculated to be 9.13 ± 2.73. there was a significant difference in total scores between men and women (p = 0.0340). there was a significant difference in total scores between those who thought and those who did not think that enough time had been allocated to theoretical education (p = 0.0001). the total score differed significantly from the responses to the question do you believe you have sufficient theoretical and practical knowledge about pioa? (p = 0.0001). conclusion: the women' knowledge level was higher than that of the men, and the students valued preventive measures. experts should consider these findings when developing the core curriculum.