Table 2:

Temperament and Dental Caries Prevalence Descriptive Data

	N	Mean (SD)	Range
Temperament Domain*
Surgency	404	5.52 (0.7)	2.5–7
Negative Affect	407***	3.1 (0.8)	1.3–6.4
Effortful Control	405	5.1 (0.)	2.6–7
Cavitated Level Dental Caries Experience**		2.0 (6.9)	0–56
d3mfs > 0	83 (20%)
Yes	325 (80%)		0–56
No		1.9 (6.9)
d4mfs > 0	77 (19%)
Yes	331 (81%)		0–56
No		1.6 (6.5)
d5mfs > 0	64 (16%)
Yes	344 (84%)
No

^*Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire - Very Short Form (ECBQ-VSF): three temperament domains (12 items each): Negative Affect reflects the degree to which a child is shy and/or not easily calmed. Surgency reflects the degree to which a child is active and seeks stimulation/impulsivity. Effortful Control reflects the degree to which a child can focus attention and restrain responses. All domain scores have a range from 1 to 7, calculated from the average of the answered items in the domain. Each item uses a Likert scale set of responses, with some of the items reverse-scored so that all items in a domain are interpreted in the same direction.

^**d3mfs, d4mfs, and d5mfs are dmfs scores calculated using ICDAS severity scores >=3, >=4, or >=5 to define the decay portion of dmfs.

^***Numbers represent children for which a scale score was calculated as more than half of the items for the scale were not missing.