Objective: To adapt the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) measurement tool SOHO-5 (scale of oral health outcomes for 5-year-old children) for use in Chinese populations, and to investigate the validity and reliability of the Chinese version of SOHO-5 (C-SOHO-5).
Materials and methods: The draft C-SOHO-5 was developed by a forward-backward process and pilot-tested on 20 child-parent pairs. The final version was tested on a sample of 5-year-old children and their parents. Clinical examinations were conducted to record the children's caries experience. The reliability of C-SOHO-5 was assessed by both internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Its discriminant validity and construct validity were also investigated.
Results: A total of 249 child-parent pairs participated in this study. Cronbach's alpha values for the child's version of C-SOHO-5 (C-SOHO-5c) and the parental version of C-SOHO-5 (C-SOHO-5p) were 0.71 and 0.82, respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficient values for C-SOHO-5c and C-SOHO-5p were 0.85 and 0.46, respectively. Both the child's and the parental version were able to discriminate the caries and caries-free children groups. Children with caries experience had higher mean ranks of the total score of both C-SOHO-5c and C-SOHO-5p than those of the caries-free children (134.9 vs. 113.8, P = 0.015; 134.7 vs. 93.2, P < 0.001). In addition, the total scores of both child's and parental reports were significantly correlated with the global rating questions.
Conclusion: The C-SOHO-5 demonstrated good reliability and validity. This tool, which uses both child's and parental reports, can be used to assess the OHRQoL of 5-year-old children in Chinese-speaking communities.
Keywords: Oral health; preschool children; quality of life; questionnaire; validity.
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