Perceptions of occlusal conditions in Australia, the German Democratic Republic and the United States of America.

An instrument developed by Jenny et al. (1980) for rating the public's perceptions of the social acceptability of a wide variety of occlusal configurations was administered to children and adults in Australia, the German Democratic Republic and the United States of America and also to US orthodontists. Mean scores for the 7 groups of subjects from the 3 countries were arranged in rank order from the least socially acceptable to the most socially acceptable and compared. The results indicate that use of the social acceptability scale of occlusal conditions (SASOC) is a highly reliable method for scoring and rank-ordering the aesthetic acceptability of occlusal morphologies. Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients between the ranking of SASOC stimuli by all 7 groups of subjects from the 3 countries ranged from 0.85 to 0.97. The probability of such correlations occurring by chance is less than 1 in 10000 (P less than 0.0001). SASOC proved capable of rank-ordering a wide range of occlusal morphologies for aesthetics with excellent consistency along the entire spectrum from the least acceptable to the most socially acceptable in all 3 countries. The data indicate that norms for socially acceptable dental appearance are essentially the same in Australia, the German Democratic Republic and the United States of America.