Abstract
Objective
To assess the impact of occupational factors on the sex ratio of dentists’ children.
Methods
A randomly selected 501 Iranian dentists participated in a telephone interview. The participants were contacted by their mobile number to answer questions about demographic variables (gender, age, marriage status), practice-related variables (year of graduation as general or specialist dentist, years of clinical work, working hours, average number of radiographs taken in a day, and spouse’s job), and questions about their children (number, gender and date of birth of each child). Kruskal–Wallis and Chi-square tests served for statistical evaluation.
Results
Of all participating dentists, 71 % were men, about two-thirds were 35- to 50-year olds, and 89 % were married. In total, the dentists had 768 children; about 21 % had no child. Of all the children, 54 % were boys (overall sex ratio = 1.17). The offspring sex ratio was 1.13 among male dentists, 1.50 for female dentists, and 1.44 when both parents were dentists. Higher percentages of boys were prevalent among female dentists, younger dentists, and general dental practitioners (p < 0.008).
Conclusion
Demographic and practice-related factors showed some impact on proportions of both sexes of dentists’ children in this study. However, the result needs evaluation in further studies.
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Acknowledgments
The idea for this study originated from a conversation with Dr. Shahrokh Alizadeh; we thank him. Special thanks to Carolyn Brimley Norris, Ph.D., from the University of Helsinki for language editing. We thank all participating dentists for their cooperation.
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Author contribution statement
HG contributed to the whole project from conception of the idea, writing the proposal, preparing the questions, supervising the implementation, doing the statistical analysis, and writing the manuscript. SRM performed the telephone interviews and helped in writing the manuscript. MN mainly performed the statistical analysis, and also helped in drafting the manuscript. FB contributed to the design of the study, prepared the list of dentists, and helped in implementation of the project.
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Ghasemi, H., Mirdehghan, S.R., Namdari, M. et al. Offspring sex ratio of Iranian dentists. Environ Health Prev Med 21, 446–449 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-016-0546-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-016-0546-y