Methods: A cross-sectional survey by face-to-face interview on 1320 adult subjects in Xi'an city was conducted from 4th June to 18th July 2008. It used a equal-sized stratified multi-stage randomly sampling methods, and the participates were divided into 5 groups by the age, including 20`29, 30`39, 40`49, 50`59 and 60`69 years old group. All the people were interviewed about the attitudes, knowledge and behavior of dental scaling based on the questionnaire.
Results: Of the 1320 participants, 359 (27.2%) had dental scaling experience. The highest value of dental scaling experience belonged to the 60`69 years age(Adjust OR = 5.156, P < 0.05) . The higher the lever of education was, the more the dental scaling experience was (Adjust OR = 19.703, P < 0.05; r=0.972,p=0.006). Higher income was related to scaling experience (Adjust OR = 3.112, P < 0.05;r=0.957,p=0.011).However, there was no difference of scaling experience between male and female.241(18.3%) had never heard of dental scaling. About 597 (45.3%) had no idea of the way to remove the teeth calculus.
Conclusion: There were less knowledge and poor attitude on dental scaling in adults of Xi'an. We advocate strengthening the publicity and education to make people fully understand dental scaling and cultivate good oral preventive care consciousness.