A network psychometric validation of the Children Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (COHQoL) questionnaire among Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children

In Australia, research evidence has shown that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children experience a higher burden of oral health diseases compared to other non-Indigenous children. The impact of oral health diseases on children’s functional and psychosocial outcomes led to the development of several instruments to evaluate child oral health-related quality of life (COHQoL), such as the Parental-Caregiver Perception Questionnaire (P-CPQ) and the Family Impact Scale (FIS). However, the psychometric properties of these instruments have been evaluated only in Western cultures and have not been investigated for Aboriginal children in Australia. The current study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the short-forms P-CPQ and FIS for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children aged 2–3 years. Data were collected from the South Australian Aboriginal Birth Cohort (SAABC), including 270 Aboriginal children aged 2–3 years. Network psychometric models were used to investigate dimensionality, item redundancy, structural consistency and item stability, model fit, internal consistency reliability and criterion validity. We propose an instrument named Aboriginal Children’s Oral Health-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire (A-COHQoL). Our findings indicated that, after the exclusion of four problematic items, the A-COHQoL showed a three-dimensional structure (“Parent/Family Activities”, “COHQoL” and “Family Conflict”) with good model fit and reliability. The A-COHQoL is a psychometrically robust and sensitive instrument that is readily available for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children aged 2–3 years in Australia and can be adapted in the future for Indigenous child groups in other countries.