The Schizophrenia Coping Oral Health Profile. Development and Feasibility

BACKGROUND: The aim of this work was to present the creation of appropriate tools to evaluate the coping strategies in Oral-Health-related Quality of Life (OHrQOL) implemented by persons with schizophrenia (PWS), the Schizophrenia Coping Oral Health Profile (SCOOHP), and the results of a feasibility study. METHODS: A qualitative investigation was conducted between June 2016 and May 2017. The first step included 26 semi-structured individual interviews, 20 with PWS and 6 with health professionals (HPs), and 2 focus groups (PWS and HPs) to explore the experiences of the participants and how they felt about coping strategies in OHrQOL. The second step was a feasibility study involving a statistical analysis to test the acceptability and internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) of the SCOOHP. RESULTS: The analysis of these interviews allowed for us to obtain 277 items from 3545 verbatim transcriptions related to various dimensions of OHrQOL. We presented the items selected in coping concepts in this study. After selecting items in several stages, we drew up the SCOOHP scale with 23 items (15 items for positive coping and 8 items for negative coping). The feasibility study showed good acceptability, good understanding of the items and good consistency reliability (α = 0.59). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study that has enabled us to draw up a specific tool to assess coping strategies in OHrQOL of PWS. A multicentre study involving a larger sample of PWS is underway in order to perform the psychometric validation of the SCOOHP. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials Gov NCT02730832. Date registered: 21 March 2016.