Source 3

Source Document Analysis Worksheet

Dandi Kiran Kumar, Rao Epari Venkat, Margabandhu Shanti				26 November 2011
Author’s name (last, first)				Publication date
Dental pain as a determinant of expressed need for dental care among 12-year old school children in India
Title
Indian Journal of Dental Research		Andhra Pradesh, India, Indian Journal of Dental Research
Book series OR Journal		Location and publisher OR volume, issue, pages

1. What is the source’s stated purpose (the argument or thesis)?

The purpose of this paper was to assess factors associated with dental pain that determine the expressed need for dental care among 12-year old school going children in India. Oral health is an integral part of general health and well-being and is therefore important in the understanding of the overall health of children. The perception of need for dental care plays a key role as to whether people in general will seek dental care. If the perception of dental care is unneeded then there will not be a utilization of healthcare services. If the perception is good then oral care will have more prevalence and there will be an improvement in psychological and social well-being. They wanted to determine the simultaneous effects of sociodemographic characteristics, pain characteristics, and the impact of pain on daily living.

2. What evidence does the author provide to support his or her main argument? How is the author attempting to logically prove his or her thesis and how does this affect the organization of the document?

The authors provide us with a lot of very useful data. Much of what they discussed can be very beneficial for my study of oral care in India. A lot of the questions that they asked and analyzed are similar to questions that I could ask. Their main results were that 71.4% of school going children had pain within the past month that they survey was conducted. Out of this group, only 27.7% sought professional advice. Within this group, about 22% reported experiencing severe pain, whereas 42.4% and 36% of the respondents reported having moderate and mild pain, respectively. They also found that about 55% of the respondents reported continuous pain throughout the day, and 74% of the respondents reported having felt pain in one tooth. Pain on thermal stimuli was reported by about 67% of the respondents, while difficulty in swallowing was reported by about 57% of the respondents. Out of those with pain, 70.4% had a rural background. Public transportation was the most common mode of transportation being used by the respondents.

The authors also try to determine the impact of pain on daily living characteristics. They found that a difficulty in brushing teeth was the highest, with 83% reporting difficulty in performing this routine task. It was followed by difficulty in eating and drinking and embarrassment in showing teeth, both being reported by about 64% of the studied population. Speaking and pronouncing was the third in order of magnitude to be affected with 55.4% reporting difficulty in carrying out this activity. Sleeping and regular school activities were reported to have been affected by 40.7% of the respondents. The least reported impact was observed for playing and laughing with 31.1% and 29.8%, respectively.

There was no statistically significant difference between genders, even though the expressed need for dental pain was higher among females. More severe the pain, more continuous the pain and pain that aggravated on thermal stimuli had a significantly higher expressed need for dental care in comparison with the counterpart. Other determinants like the duration of the pain, pain experienced in one or multiple teeth, and difficulty in swallowing were found to have statistically insignificant association with expressed needs. It was found that embarrassment in showing teeth was very important determinant of expressed need for dental treatment. Other daily living characteristics that were significantly associated with expressed needs for dental care were pain while brushing and cleaning of teeth, pain while eating or drinking, inability in attending or performing school work, difficulty in getting sleep, and inability to go for playing.

3. Who is the audience? What does the author assume the audience already knows about the topic?

The audience that is being addressed is any individual, group, organization, or government interested in the dental condition of India. Dentists may be curious how much work they might have in India. The government might be interested in the need for oral care. Organizations may be curious about what are the most pressing needs and how they can help. This information is all very helpful for determining what steps can be taken to improve oral health care. The audience does not need to know anything about the oral condition in order to understand this article because the author provides all relevant information.

4. Describe the author’s methods (i.e. how does the author know what he or she knows)?  In your opinion were they appropriate why or why not?

The authors were very appropriate in the way that they gathered their information. They took a random survey of schools and used a large number of students to gather their data. There was equal representation of males and females. They also took into account a lot of the other sociodemographic conditions.

5. To what other sources (theorist, researchers, artists) does the author refer? Explain the specific ideas the author draws upon from these other sources to support his or her own argument (the theoretical framework).

The author refers to various studies in other countries that gathered similar research. They compare and contrast what they gathered to observe the difference and similarities between various countries in similar conditions. This allows the authors to identify how serious a problem is in a certain country and what can be done to help fix that problem.

6. What are the connections between this source and your project? How useful or applicable is this source’s approach to your own project? How is yours new and different? 

This source provides a very good framework for what I will be doing in India. It gives me the most similar types of questions that I will be asking while over there. I can also assess many of the sociodemographic conditions that they assessed too. It was great to be able to read about the problems that their research encountered and the reasons that they occurred. Much of what they did was questionnaire based which will be helpful for me because I will be setting up my study in a similar way. Their research involved a lot of statistical data dealing with what percentages of people were in certain categories. I still have not picked my research topic, but I believe a lot of what I gather will compare to this.