Dental Students’ Knowledge, Confidence, Ability, and Self-Reported Difficulties in Periodontal Education: A Mixed Method Pilot Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Evidence on periodontal education areas in which students have difficulties and their factors are limited. In this study, third- and fourth-year dental students' knowledge was assessed as well as their confidence and ability in five periodontal educational areas using a mixed-method approach. A survey was used to collect data related to history-taking, medical examination, diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-up. Student answers were compared to the consensual answers of an expert panel using the cosine-similarity index (CSI). Descriptive statistics assessed confidence and ability for diagnosis. Semi-structured individual interviews were used to collect data on reported reasons for difficulties in periodontal education. A content analysis was employed to analyze the interview data. Eighteen third- and fourth-year dental students completed the survey and eleven were interviewed. Students' knowledge was adequate regarding diagnosis and treatment planning. Third-year students' median CSI were 0.93 and 0.89, respectively. Fourth-year students' median CSI were 0.9 and 0.93, respectively. Students felt confident in history-taking and examination but lacked confidence and ability in diagnosis and treatment planning. Reported reasons for difficulties in periodontal education were linked to both preclinical and clinical pedagogical issues. Further improvements in preclinical and clinical periodontal education are needed to address students' lack of knowledge, confidence, and skills in key periodontal areas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".