Question

A dentist office gives a survey to all wisdom teeth extraction patients asking them to rate the quality of their dental experience. One month after wisdom teeth extraction, the dentist contacts the patients again to ask if there were any complications from the extraction. Last year, the results of the surveys showed that of the patients who had a poor dental experience, 94% had post-extraction complications. What conclusion can be drawn from this study?
answers

Some patients who have a poor dental experience also have post-extraction complications.


Most patients who have a poor dental experience also have post-extraction complications.


Poor dental experiences cause post-extraction complications.


Post-extraction complications cause poor dental experiences.

Answer 1

The answer would most likely be the second choice, that most patients who have a poor dental experience also have post-extraction complications.

Since it is not 100% of patients (and the fact that with dental/oral surgeon experience as a whole there are many possible factors as to why one would have a poor dental experience, like that it's way too expensive, the anesthetic was not administered properly, or someone was rude, etc.) causation could not be accurately identified without further research.

[A little personal note here, I actually had my wisdom teeth removed and one socket got infected a week later, but the procedure itself went well and I wasn't in too much pain. Though I imagine that in many real-life scenarios, a complication could certainly make the experience worse.]

Answer 2

The correct answer is B. Most patients who have a poor dental experience also have post-extraction complications. This can be shown through the fact that of everyone who had a poor dental experience, 94% said they had post-extraction complication. 94% is obviously most. We can not confidently say that poor dental experiences cause post-extraction problems because we do not know how many people who had a normal or good experience also had problems.