Social differences in dental attitudes and behaviour in West Midland mothers.

Only in the past few years have the attitudes of the public to dental health been investigated in any depth. These studies include those of Butler (1967), Bulman et al. (1968), Gray et al. (1970) and Dickson (1968a, b). The results have shown that many of these attitudes are class related. The present study was designed to investigate the dental attitudes of groups living in the West Midlands and to try to discover which of several social factors had most bearing on these attitudes. There are many factors associated with the concept of class by various social scientists and this was operationalized in the present project by considering the occupation of the father , father's income, father's education, mother 's education, type of domicile and how the mother voted at the previous General Election earlier that year. The following categories were used in the analysis :