The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of mothers´ socioeconomic factors and dental health behaviors on children´s dental visits. 2916 children and their mothers were selected for the study. Using the "Health Belief Model" a questionnaire was constructed and administered to the samples. Stepwise multiple regression analysis and path analysis was used for analysis techniques. The independent variables used for analysis were fifteen mothers´ dental health behaviors and the nineteen socioeconomic factors, and the dependent variables were children´s preventive dental visit, general dental visit, diagnostic dental visit.
The findings of analysis can be summarized as follows:
1. In this study, the amount of variance by the model was 16-36 percent(Adjusted H2 was 0.35 in the model for preventive utilization, 0.16 in that for general utilization).
2. Preventive dental utilization shows larger amount of variance(adjusted H2) due to behavioral factors than general and diagnostic dental utilization. 3. Mother´s dental utilization was most important factor affecting dental utilization of children.
4. Factors affecting dental utilization are age, age of household, region, religion, having job, socioeconomic status, age of the youngest family member, available monies for leisure and cultural activities, savings rate, mothers´susceptibility and salience, seriousness on oral disease of children, number of preventive dental visit, family size, communication between family members, education level.
5. Preventive and diagnostic dental utilization shows larger amount of variance(adjusted R2) due to social and economical factors than general dental utilization.
6. Dental utilizations of children are closley related to dental health beliefs of their mothers.
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