Yildiz, Dogan Since the questionnaire was distributed at the be- ginning of the academic years, only the students in their fourth and fifth year were designated as clinical students. This is the first study among Turkish dental students comparing the oral health attitudes and behaviour in preclinical and clinical years. Al- though most of the previous results from differ- ent countries on dental students were only from a single dental faculty of a country12,19,24 in the present study, we included 3 old dental faculties from 2 different cities and the large number of students enabled us to make some possible gen- eral interpretations about the results. The results showed that the majority of dental students care about their oral health. Nevermore, low rate of regular dental visit among dental students can be explained by the fact that restorative dentistry is more commonly provided than preventive den- tistry in the Turkish governmental dental health policy. In accordance with the study from Jordan;23 the Turkish clinical students were also less often bothering by the colour of the gums, postponing going to the dentist until having a toothache, re- porting gum bleeding after brushing, and more often brushing teeth twice daily or more than pre- clinical ones (Table 3). These improvements may due to the increasing experience of the students about oral health care by being in contact with pa- tients in clinical environment. However, a study Table 5. Results of the logistic regression analysis for the level of education. from India showed no significant differences be- tween preclinical and clinical dental students.19 The questionnaire item 4 was to clear out the subjects’ awareness about microbial dental plaque. But unexpectedly, clinical students who agreed with this item were at a lower percent- age than preclinical students (19% and 22%, re- spectively). It was probably because this question might also be misinterpreted as whether their teeth were clean or not instead of being aware of plaque. In some studies, this item was excluded from the questionnaire totally,23 or from calcula- tion of the HU-DBI scores9 because of interpre- tation problems. Interestingly, there was no sig- nificant difference between preclinical and clinical dental students regarding daily brushing habits. Overall percentage of twice daily or more brushing of dental students was in accordance with previ- ous results from Turkey and Jordan13,23 but high- er than Iranian ones.7 Similar to the most of the previous studies,13,14,17,18,23 dental floss users were also low among Turkish dental students. Smoking affects whole oral and systemic health.25-27 Dentists are important role models for their patients, and those using tobacco probably are less likely to counsel their patients to quite. In the present study, the rate of smoking was 26%. The prevalence of smoking in this study was in ac- cordance with previous studies on Turkish dental students where low number of dental students included (22%).13 A review on smoking habits of No 3 6 8 10 11 14 15 17 18 20 23 26 Constant Item descriptions I worry about colour of my teeth I think that I cannot help having false teeth when I am old I think my teeth are getting worse despite my daily brushing I have never been professionally taught how to brush I think I can clean my teeth without using toothpaste It is impossible to prevent gum disease with toothbrushing alone I put off going to the dentist until I have a toothache I use a toothbrush which has hard bristles I don’t feel I’ve brushed well unless I brush with strong strokes I have had my dentist tell me that I brush very well I use dental floss on regular basis everyday I smoke more than ½ pack per day B 0.621 1.031 0.713 0.552 -0.545 0.615 0.350 0.611 0.752 -0.453 -0.467 -1.286 -4.787 SE 0.203 0.248 0.230 0.190 0.187 0.178 0.187 0.243 0.223 0.179 0.205 0.229 1.044 Wald Chi-square 9.392 17.341 9.617 8.466 8.527 11.961 3.512 6.350 11.377 6.372 5.208 31.497 21.047 df 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 P 0.002 0.000 0.002 0.004 0.003 0.001 0.041 0.012 0.001 0.012 0.022 0.000 0.000 Number of questions not included in this model (1, 4, 5, 12, 13, 19, 21, 22, 24) since no significant difference was found between preclinical and clinical students in the Chi- square test analysis. July 2011 - Vol.5 257 European Journal of Dentistry