زهرا فرجیان زاده

The high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among dental clients requires sufficient knowledge in this regard. For this purpose, we aimed to develop a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess the awareness of cardiovascular diseases among final year dental students.

After designing 38 questions, four areas were identified and to determine the validity, 7 specialists from the departments of Community Oral Health (2 people), Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases (2 people), Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (2 people) and Cardiologist (n=1) evaluated the validity indicators and then to measure the reliability. The final form was distributed among 24 senior year dental students two weeks apart using the test-retest method and kappa statistics were calculated.

To determine the total validity of the instrument, the S-CVI value of the general agreement approach was 94.73% and in the mean approach was 87.84%. Also, the I-CVI values ​​of each question were above 0.70. Finally, out of the first 38 questions, 4 questions were removed due to lack of simplicity and the kappa coefficient of the remaining 34 questions, except for three questions, was obtained above 0.61, the middle of the total kappa coefficient was equal to 0.77.

With regard to desirable validity and reliability indices, it seems that this questionnaire is a useful tool to assess the awareness of dental students about cardiovascular diseases.