A cross-sectional observational study on parents’ knowledge and anxiety about their children’s treatment during covid-19 pandemic in Surabaya, Indonesia

Background: The impact of COVID-19 pandemic has made everyone, especially parents, very anxious and afraid of doing activities outside the home. The psychosocial factors faced by parents appear to harm their children’s oral health. Parents have a significant role in maintaining early childhood dental health, which is an essential factor for further regulation of dentition in toddlers and preschool children. This study explored the rela- tionship between the levels of parents’ knowledge and anxiety about children’s dental treatment or examination during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Methods: This study was conducted by distributing online Google Form questionnaires to each of re- search subjects via WhatsApp. It consisted of 24 questions related to the parents’ anxiety and knowledge about COVID-19. Reliability was determined by looking at the Cronbach’s alpha value. Results: The level knowledge obtained from the Cronbach’s Al- pha variable test was 0.713 and the level of parental anxiety was 0.926. The results ob- tained were significant (p = 0.000; p < 0.05) and had a unidirectional relationship (Sper- man correlation coefficient = -0.332). Conclusion: This study indicated that the higher the level of knowledge, the lower the level of anxiety among parents when taking their children to a dentist during the COVID-19 pandemic.