The community and orthodontic care. Part I: community-perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment.

A professionally managed telephone survey was undertaken to assess community-perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment, and to determine the proportion of the community with a history of having some form of orthodontic treatment. The sample included 505 respondents, aged eighteen and over, from metropolitan and non-metropolitan households across the state of Victoria in Australia. The sample distribution had a ninety-five per cent confidence limit with a five per cent margin of error, and closely matched the known population distributions for age, sex and geographical location. From the survey it can be concluded that apparently forty-four per cent of Victorian families include someone who has already received some form of orthodontic treatment. Twenty-five per cent of the survey respondents perceived some need for the treatment of a family member; only fifteen per cent of respondents, however, reported that someone in their family actually wanted treatment. This survey has established baseline values for community perceived need and demand for orthodontic treatment. Use of these values should assist in future resource management within both the public and private sectors.