Do temperament characteristics of children affect their preferences for dental waiting room?

It is known that dental anxiety may occur during the waiting action in the waiting room before the treatment in patients. By increasing the physical attractiveness of waiting rooms, it may be possible to improve the waiting experience of children and reduce preoperative anxiety. In this study, it is aimed to give an idea about the arrangement of dental waiting rooms, which are important in reducing preoperative anxiety, to use the child preferences obtained as a result of the research, and even to create waiting rooms in different designs in order to increase the cooperation of children with different temperaments. 150 children between the ages of 6-11 participated in the study. Before all of the questionnaires were administered, the "Emotionality, Activity and Sociability Temperament Survey (EAS Temperament Survey)" was first administered to 15 participants who were not included in the study, by both the principal researcher and a different pediatric dentist in the study, at the same visit, in order to measure the inter-observer reliability. Two weeks later, the EAS Temperament Survey was administered to each of the 15 children again by the principal investigator to measure the reliability of the tests. Afterwards, the "Modified Waiting Room Preferences Questionnaire (MWRPQ)" and " Children Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS)" were applied to 150 children; EAS Temperament Survey and demographic data questionnaire were applied to parents by the principal researcher. The Cohen's Kappa test was used to determine the interobserver agreement of the Emotionality, Activity and Sociability Temperament Survey, and the Wilcoxon test was used to compare the questionnaires administered at two-week intervals. While evaluating the study data, Mann-Whitney-U test, Kruskal Wallis test, Mann-Whitney-U test with Bonferroni correction, and Spearman's rho correlation analysis were used. p<0.05 level was considered significant in all analyzes. In our study, there was no statistically significant relationship between the demographic data questions (mother-father education level, family income, mother-father profession, type of school the children attend, living with the father, the total number of children in the family and the number of younger siblings) and the temperament of the children (p> 0.05), a weak but statistically significant negative correlation was found between the number of older siblings and the emotionality subgroup (r=-0.206, p=0.012; p<0.05). As a result of the analyzes made to determine the differences according to age and gender groups with the EAS Temperament Questionnaire applied to the participants in the study, it was determined that the relationship between emotionality and sociability scores and age groups was statistically significant, and that both emotionality and sociability scores decreased with increasing age (p=0.043; p<0.005, p=0.014; p<0.005). No statistically significant relationship was found between activity and shyness scores and age groups (p>0.05). No statistically significant relationship was found between gender and EAS Temperament Survey subgroups (p>0.05). It was determined that there was a statistically significant relationship between the shyness subgroup and the low-high degree of anxiety, which is one of the CFSS-DS subgroups and it was determined that shyness scores and CFSS-DS scores increased together (p=0.001; p<0.017). No statistically significant relationship was found between MWRPQ questions and temperament subgroups (p>0.05). When we look at the general percentage preferences for MWRPQ, it is seen that the children prefer women as the gender of the secretary, pop music as the music, flower scents such as roses for the perfume scent, sunlight for the lighting, a quiet room with one or two children as the room, character paintings such as Mickey Mousse for the wall decoration, blue for wall color, pouffe or pear chair as furniture and reading a book as an activity more than other options while waiting. It was determined that the children wanted to watch videos on tablets and mobile phones and cartoons on television. It was found that the children wanted to wait in the waiting rooms with their parents or relatives, and they wanted their parents to pick them up and drop them off from the waiting room. It was determined that the children felt more happy to compared other emotions while waiting in the waiting room. In addition, it was found that the children wanted to wait in the waiting room with flowers. Although it was not statistically significant, it was found that the children in the emotionality and shyness subgroups, who were generally more likely to show dental anxiety, preferred the scent of spices such as mint and cloves as perfumes, sunlight as light, and blue as color. It was also found that children wanted to watch videos about teeth and brushing and they wanted to wait with their parents and relatives. It was thought that there was no relationship between waiting room preferences and temperament, but considering the general preferences of the children's waiting room and the preferences of shy and emotional children while preparing the waiting rooms would be beneficial for the development of strategies to reduce children's anxiety through environmental factors. Keywords: Temperament, Dental waiting room, Anxiety, Child