Agreement between adolescents and parents overview of oral health–related quality of life (OHRQoL)

Abstract

Introduction: OHRQoL plays an important role in understanding subjective patient evaluations of and experience with oral healthcare [1,2]. The aim is to access the agreement between adolescents and parents regarding the impact of OHRQoL.

Materials and methods: A sample of 112 pairs of adolescents aged 11 to 14 years and parents, previously signed a consent form and dully completed the Portuguese version of the Parental Perceptions Questionnaire (PPQ) and the Child Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ_11–14). The ethical approval was granted by ethical committee of Universidad de Sevilla. A descriptive analysis was performed using the software IBM SPSS © statistics 20.0.

Results: The Cronbach’s alpha values for the respective CPQ11-14 and PPQ, were in: a) Oral Symptoms, 0.49 and 0.52; b) Functional Limitations, 0.75 and 0.66; c) Emotional Well-being, 0.91 and 0.82; d) and Social well-being, 0.81 and 0.79. The results obtained demonstrate statistically significant differences in the General Oral Health: 1.63 (±0.88), 2.11 (±0.95), p < 0.000; General Well-being 0.64 (±0.85) and 0.93 ± (0.90), p < 0.006); General Oral Health and Well-being 2.27 (±1.37) and 3.03 (±1.56), p < 0.000; and Emotional Well-being 3.04 (±4.47) and 2.28 (±3.3), p < 0.033).

Discussion and conclusions: The agreement/disagreement between the assessments of the children and their parents were investigated through the domains: “General Oral Health”, “General Well-being,” Oral health & General well- being “and” Emotional well- being”. Thus, with the exception of “Emotional Well-being”, children evaluate all areas better than their parents, with less impact on OHRQoL. Finally on “Emotional Well-being”, parents evaluate this area better than their children.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of responses of parents and adolescents on General Oral Health, General Well-being and Analysis of the internal consistency of different Domains (OS, FL, EWE, and SWE).

	Adolescents			Parents
Domains	Mean	SD	Cronbach’s alpha	Mean	SD	Cronbach’s alpha	p value
General Oral Health	1.63	0.88	–	2.11	0.95	–	0.000
General Well-being	0.64	0.85	–	0.93	0.90	–	0.006
General Oral Health and Well-being	2.27	1.37	–	3.03	1.56	–	0.000
Oral Symptoms	4.32	2.35	0.49	3.83	2.68	0.52	0.079
Functional Limitations	2.76	3.43	0.75	2.93	3.17	0.66	0.631
Emocional Well-being	3.04	4.47	0.91	2.28	3.33	0.82	0.033
Social Well-being	2.00	3.07	0.81	1.55	2.83	0.79	0.113

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledge the support of City Hall of Torres Vedras.