Survey on Dentists’ Opinion on Effectiveness of Teeth Whitening ProductsBack

Research Background

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) commissioned the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of The University of Hong Kong to conduct this Survey on Dentists’ Opinion on Effectiveness of Teeth Whitening Products to gauge Hong Kong citizens’ perception on teeth whitening, as well as the latest trend of use of teeth whitening products through dentists’ clinical experience.

The research instrument used in this study was designed entirely by the POP Team after consulting GSK, while both POP and GSK had equal say in the final instrument. Moreover, fieldwork operations, data collection and data analysis were conducted independently by the POP Team, without interference from any party. In other words, although the content of the questionnaire mainly came from the commissioning organization, POP was given full autonomy to design and conduct the survey, and POP would take full responsibility for all the findings reported herewith.

Research Design

The survey was conducted by self-administered questionnaire. The target population of this survey is Hong Kong registered dentists. The contact list was provided by the commissioning organization, POP then mailed the invitations and questionnaires to eligible dentists on the contact list. Dentists can return the completed questionnaire to POP directly by mail or fax.

The survey was conducted during the period of July 15 to 21, 2014. POP sent out invitations and questionnaires to 1,030 dentists. 233 questionnaires were returned, and all of them were valid questionnaires. The response rate of this survey was 22.6%, calculated as the number of valid sample divided by the number of distributed questionnaires. Assuming no response bias, at 95% confidence level, the sampling error for all percentages was less than plus/minus 6.1 percentage point for the overall sample.