The PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale in Iranian children: reliability and validity

Area of Science:

• Pediatric dentistry
• Health outcomes research
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Assessing oral-health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in children is crucial for understanding health impacts.
• Validated instruments are needed to accurately measure OHRQoL in diverse populations.
• The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ (PedsQL™) Oral Health Scale is a valuable tool for this purpose.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate the PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale into Persian for use in Iran.
• To evaluate the psychometric properties of the translated scale in a large cohort of Iranian children.
• To assess the combined utility of the PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale and PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales.

Main Methods:

• Forward and backward translation of the PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale into Persian.
• Administration of the Persian PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale and PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales to 1053 children and 1026 parents.
• Reliability testing (internal consistency, test-retest) and validity assessment (known-groups, factor analysis).

Main Results:

• The Persian PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability.
• The scale showed discriminant validity across different decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) index categories and gender.
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the scale's factor structure.

Conclusions:

• The Persian version of the PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale exhibits excellent psychometric properties.
• The PedsQL™ Oral Health Scale, combined with the PedsQL™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales, is suitable for assessing multidimensional OHRQoL in Iranian children.
• This validated instrument can inform clinical practice and public health initiatives for child oral health in Iran.