Cinar, Murtomaa, Tseveenjav public health centers.21 Each dentist follows with health capital measures (body height and detailed guidelines and treatment decisions weight) of pre-adolescents. Number of children outlined by the Helsinki City Health Department in the family, family type, and time spent with according to WHO criteria.20 For this study, oral mother (Table 1) were used as the family-related health data of Finnish pre-adolescents were taken indicators related to family context as defined in from the records stored at the Helsinki City Health the life-course approach.25,26 Mothers were asked Department with permission. in the maternal questionnaires to measure height The dental examinations in Turkey were carried to the nearest 0.1 cm and weight to the nearest out in the classrooms two weeks before the survey 0.1 kg with pre-adolescents standing wearing only by two calibrated paediatric dentists who worked underwear in bare feet, standing erect against a professionally in dental university clinics. The wall-mounted measuring tape. Parents were not dental examinations were performed under field to include earlier measurements available, and to conditions using natural light. The pre-adolescent have new measurements after the arrival of the was seated in a chair with a high backrest; the questionnaires at homes. Of the Turkish study examiner stood in front of the chair. Plane mouth group, 10% of mothers were asked to re-complete mirrors and blunt dental probes were used for the the maternal health behaviour questionnaires two examination. Following WHO recommendations,20 weeks after the cessation of the survey. Intra- the examiners first recorded caries on dental examiner reliability for the measurement of the charts, in terms of DMFT/dmft (number of decayed, height (the Spearman Brown coefficient) was missing, and filled permanent/primary teeth) and rs=0.789, and was rs=0.747 for the weight (P<.05). DMFS/dmfs (number of decayed, missing, and Further, intraclass correlation was applied to test filled surfaces of permanent/primary teeth). Those the reliability of the scales and it was rI=0.788 and scores for each pre-adolescent were calculated, rI=0.746 (P<.001), respectively, for the Turkish and and lesions were recorded as present when a Finnish pre-adolescents. carious cavity was detected on manual inspection. The Turkish response rate was 97% for the In the present study, only DMFT scores were oral health behaviour questionnaire for the pre- used. Of the study group, 10% were re-examined adolescents (n=591; 345 public- and 246 private for inter-examiner and intra-examiner reliability school pre-adolescents) and 87% for that of of DMFT (0.89; 0.96, 0.92), respectively (P<.05). the mothers (n=533; 334 public- and 199 private DMFT values of both groups were dichotomized school mothers). The participation rate totalled into healthy (DMFT=0) and diseased (DMFT>0) 95% for participation in dental examinations by subgroups for further analysis. the pre-adolescents (n=584; 348 public- and 236 Behavioural capital measures were selected private school pre-adolescents). Finnish data from the pre-adolescent oral health behaviour showed a response rate for pre-adolescents of questionnaire that was designed to survey pre- 65% (n=223), and for their mothers 53% (n=180). adolescents’ self-reported oral health and The Finnish dental examination rate was 65%. behaviour and psychological measures. The Boys comprised 57% of the Finnish and 51% of the design of those measures, Tooth-brushing Self- Turkish population. efficacy (TBSES) and Modified Self-esteem were Descriptive statistics, frequency distributions described in earlier studies.10,19 Sum scores for were performed and for each further statistical TBSES were coded as low and high by taking the analysis, those mother-pre-adolescent pairs not medians as the cut offs;22 4 for the Turkish and responding the body-height measures, 14% (n=74) 9 for the Finnish pre-adolescents. The Modified and 14% (n=25) among Turkish and Finnish pre- Self-esteem Scale,23 composed of nine items, adolescents, were extracted. Therefore mother- each ranging along a three-point scale (agree=1 pre-adolescents pairs included in further analysis to disagree=3), was coded with medians as cut-off were n=459 for the Turks and n=155 for the Finns. points, 4 for Turks and 5 for Finns. Pearson’s correlation and the contingency co- A maternal oral health behaviour questionnaire, efficient for determining associations between modified from Pine et al,24 analyses family- variables were applied. The Chi-square (χ2) test by related factors and oral health behaviours, along cross-tabulation was used to compare frequencies, July 2008 - Vol.2 155 European Journal of Dentistry