Development and Validation of the Oral Health Values Scale

Oral health values, the degree to which one places importance on or demonstrates investment in improving or maintaining one's dental status, are believed to vary across individuals. Research on this construct is in its infancy, so a new Oral Health Values Scale (OHVS) was developed and validated. The aim was to create a multidimensional measure of oral health values that could be used in future epidemiological or behavioural investigations involving determinants of dental treatment-seeking behaviour and/or oral health.

The OHVS was developed in three cross-sectional phases. A 45-item pool was developed, and 12 expert raters from various oral health professions rated the items for their representativeness and relevance, as well as specificity and clarity. Based on the expert feedback, an initial 30-item scale was subsequently established and administered to a developmental sample (N = 306) using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The scale was further refined to be 12 items and its structure was confirmed in a validation sample (N = 308), also using MTurk. Correlations among OHVS scores and other oral health-related constructs were examined in the developmental and validation samples.

Expert review of items for the oral health values construct and the OHVS provided initial evidence of content validity. The final 12-item scale exhibited a four-factor structure with good internal consistency, α = 0.84. The psychometric properties of the final scale were confirmed in a second sample using confirmatory factor analysis, although evidence for the OHVS's four-factor structure was mixed. Overall, OHVS scores were consistently related to other oral health constructs in anticipated ways, providing evidence of construct validity.

The OHVS demonstrated content validity, internal consistency, and construct validity. Results suggest that the OHVS is a psychometrically sound instrument.