| Summary: | Abstract Background Dental caries are a significant public health problem. It is a disease with multifactorial causes. In Sub-Sahara Africa, Ethiopia is one of the countries with a high record of dental caries. This study was to determine the risk factors affecting dental caries using both Bayesian and classical approaches. Methods The study design was a retrospective cohort study in the period of March 2009 to March 2013 dental caries patients Hawassa Haik Poly Higher Clinic. The Bayesian logistic regression procedure was adapted to make inference about the parameters of a logistic regression model. The purpose of this method was generating the posterior distribution of the unknown parameters given both the data and some prior density for the unknown parameters. Results From this study the prevalence of natural dental caries was 87% and non-natural dental caries were 13%. The age group of 18–25 was higher prevalence of dental caries than the other age groups. From Bayesian logistic regression, we found out that rural patients, do not clean their teeth, patients from SNNPR and age group 18–25 are statistically significant. The finding from the Bayesian statistics approach is getting popular in data analysis than classical statistics because the technique is more robust and precise. Conclusions Bayesian approach was found to be better than classical method as the value of the standard errors in Bayesian approaches is smaller than that of classical logistic regression. The Bayesian credible interval is smaller than the length of the confidence interval for all significant risk factors. Age, sex, place of residence, region and habit of cleaning teeth was found to have a significant effect on dental caries patients.
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