Methods: Fifty-one dental nurse-child interactions (3 nurse pairs and 51 children) during the Childsmile fluoride varnish application were recorded using a webcam attached to a laptop. Both nurse and child verbal and non-verbal behaviours were coded for camera-related behaviours. Previous research suggests that there are seven categories of camera-related behaviours including camera-oriented looking and talking as well as some self-reflective behaviours such as adjusting one's clothes. Two researchers, both trained in behavioural coding, manually coded the 51 video recordings separately in a 2-day period simultaneously for frequency and duration of the behaviours. Inter-coder reliability was calculated.
Results: Inter-coder reliability was 0.82. One out of 6 nurses (16.67%) showed a total of 9 instances of camera-related behaviours (nine glances and one talking), which comprised approximately 0.35% of the time they were in the interaction. Four out of 51 children (7.84%) showed signs of camera-orientated glances of up to 8 instances comprising approximately 0.26% of their total interaction time. These behaviours occurred not only at the very beginning but also approaching to the middle of the interactions.
Conclusion: Camera-related behaviours did seem to appear in nurse-child interactions in dental-related contexts and seemed to last beyond the initial stage of the interaction, though generally they seemed to occur infrequently and lasted for very short periods of time.
Acknowledgement: Funded by the Scottish Government.