Assessment of dental students' attitudes toward cancer using a paired comparison technique.

The purpose of this paper is to present a description of the development of an instrument to measure attitudes towards cancer. The instrument used a paired comparison technique to assess dental students' attitude toward patients with cancer in relation to other diseases of patients they would encounter in practice. Nine diseases including cancer were paired in 36 combinations. A shift in the ranking of cancer when compared with other serious diseases would indicate a change in attitude. The attitude instrument was administered to 67 students at the beginning and end of a junior oncology course. Analysis of the paired comparison resulted in rankings for the diseases from least to most preferred. The ranking for cancer moved from second to fourth indicating a positive attitude change. The importance of the students' attitude toward encountering patients with cancer and implications for this technique in attitude measurement are discussed.