Inductive analysis methods applied on questionnaires

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate subjective aspects from questionnaires dealing with dental trauma by applying different computerized inductive techniques within the field of artificial intelligence to questionnaires consisting of descriptive variables and of questions reflecting functional, personal, and social effects of patients' oral situation following dental trauma. As the methodology used is new to many readers in odontologic sciences, a detailed description of both the processes and the terminology is given. Utilizing a neural network as a first step in an analysis of data showed if relations existed in the training set, but the network could not make the relations explicit, so other methods, inductive methods, had to be applied. Inductive methods have the potential constructing rules from a set of examples. The rules combined with domain knowledge can reveal relations between the variables. It can be concluded that the usage of methods based on artificial intelligence can greatly improve explanatory value and make knowledge in databases explicit.