A study of factors associated with changes in dental anxiety.

Patients were given the Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) to complete and asked to indicate the degree of pain they expected to feel on that day's visit to a dentist. After the appointment, they indicated the degree of pain actually experienced. Three months later, the patients were contacted by mail and asked about the amount of pain they remembered having experienced and to complete the DAS again. There was considerable stability in DAS scores over the two administrations, but some of the change in scores was associated with the discrepancy between the degree of pain the patients expected and the degree of pain they actually experienced.