Psychometric properties of the Child-OIDP and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in secondary schools in Suva, Fiji

BACKGROUND: Oral health-related problems are highly prevalent and, like many other diseases, affect Quality of Life. Although most primary schools in Fiji have supervised school brushing programs and have regular screenings these preventive aspects are missing in secondary schools. OBJECTIVE: To assess the internal consistency reliability, face and content validity of the Child-OIDP questionnaire and determine the oral health-related quality of life in 15-year-olds in Suva, Fiji. METHODS: A cross-sectional prospective study was carried out on 15-year-old children from four secondary schools in Suva, Fiji from 2014 to 2015. All students enrolled in the 10th and 11th year of studies were included. Multi-stage cluster sampling was used to identify the participants and the sample size of 367 was calculated. The Child Oral Impact on Daily Performance (Child-OIDP) self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data and data was analyzed using Epi-Info (3.5.1). RESULTS: A total of 281 students (76.6%) responded, of whom 47.0% experienced at least one impact. Cronbach’s alpha for the Child-OIDP frequency items was 0.70 and the corrected item-total correlation ranged from 0.13 to 0.57. The most common performances that were affected were eating (27.8%) and relaxing (12.8%). Performances that were severely and most severely influenced were social contact (23.1%), smiling (16.7%) and relaxing (16.7%). The most common conditions leading to impacts were dental sensitivity (38.4%), dental caries (23.5%) and toothache (21.4%). CONCLUSION: The original version of the Child-OIDP is a reliable index with acceptable internal consistency when used directly in the Fiji setting, however, further studies to validate the tool will be useful. Oral impacts were prevalent, but not severe.