Validation of dental impact on daily living questionnaire among tribal population of India

BACKGROUND: Oral conditions are known to affect various aspects of quality of life. Similarly, the social consequence of the quality of life in the day to day living is also equally important. Several studies have quantified the social consequences of diseases through activity limitations in people's daily living. The instruments which cover a broad spectrum of life are proposed to be compared with the clinical oral hygiene status of people from different social classes. AIM: To assess the validity of dental impact on daily living (DIDL) questionnaire measuring subjective dental problems and their impact in the day to day life among tribes of Wayanad. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional. MATERIALS AND METHODS: DIDL questionnaire developed by Leao and Sheiham was used. We recorded the clinical oral health status using decayed, missing, filled, simplified oral hygiene index, and community periodontal index indices, to correlate the subjective findings of dental impact tribe to obtain construct validity of the questionnaire. ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics and Spearman's correlation using IBM SPSS software version 20. RESULTS: In the study population of 250 participants, the majority of the participants were from the age group between 36 and 50 years (40%) and females were in the majority (64%). The clinical status of the participants was poor in the majority while their perceived impact in their day to day living was found to be relatively satisfied. The study results show the DIDL tool had weak validity in relation to the clinical status with relevance to the social status of Indian tribal population. CONCLUSION: The study result shows that there was insignificant and weak validity between the DIDL tool and the oral health status among these tribes who were from a low social class. This might be because their priority in life which is different from what a person from high social class. So the dental problem is ignored at the level of individual depending on his/her priority and at the community level by the policy makers.