The ethics of in vivo calibrations in oral health surveys.

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the ethics of in vivo calibration, using the discourse of the administrators of the National Oral Health Survey (SBBrasil 2010) as a starting point. METHOD: This is a qualitative research involving semi-structured individual interviews with 12 members of the Steering Group and Technical Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Health, and two coordinators, one State and the other Municipal. The discourse of the collective subject technique was used for data analysis. RESULTS: When asked about the experiences of SBBrasil 2010, which included ethical aspects, respondents identified the forms of standardization and training of teams who collected field data. For them, there is little scientific evidence to ethically support the way the training stage, including calibration, is carried out in oral health epidemiological surveys, as a certain unease can be predicted in participants of these studies. CONCLUSION: The ethics of a research also derives from its methodological rigor; the training process; and calibration in particular, is a fundamental technical and ethical requirement in surveys such as the SBBrasil 2010. The unease of the volunteers in face of test repetition does not ethically invalidate the in vivo calibration, but mechanisms to minimize it must be developed.