Self-Rated Oral Health and Quality of Life Factors
Summary
Self-rated oral health offers a window into how individuals perceive their dental and gum status and its impact on daily living. It integrates clinical conditions, symptoms and personal attitudes to shape oral health-related quality of life. Factors such as pain, functional limitation, aesthetic concerns and psychosocial impacts converge to inform self-assessment and guide care seeking. Socioeconomic status, health literacy and trust in dental providers mediate perceptions and can magnify inequalities in access, utilisation and outcomes. Measurement tools, including brief questionnaires, capture the multidimensional nature of these assessments and enable population surveillance, clinical screening and evaluation of interventions. By linking subjective reports with objective measures and broader wellbeing indicators, research in this area underpins public health strategies, informs policy and encourages patient-centred care globally.
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Self-Rated Oral Health and Quality of Life Factors publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in self-rated oral health and quality of life factors across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Self-rated oral health: An individual’s own assessment of their dental and gum condition, encompassing symptoms and perceived impacts.
Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL): A multidimensional measure of how oral conditions affect daily functioning, comfort and social wellbeing.
Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP): A standardised questionnaire for capturing the frequency of oral health problems and their effects on quality of life.
Structural equation modelling (SEM): A statistical method for testing complex relationships among observed and latent variables in social and health research.
References
- Dental service sector and patient-reported oral health outcomes: Modification by trust in dentists. Frontiers in Public Health (2023).
- Relationship between oral health-related knowledge, attitudes, practice, self-rated oral health and oral health-related quality of life among Chinese college students: a structural equation modeling approach. BMC Oral Health (2021).
- Oral health inequality among Indonesian workers in South Korea: role of health insurance and discrimination factors. BMC Oral Health (2022).
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