Teachers' perception of oral health status. Design and validation of an evaluation instrument

Abstract

The evaluation of health status is a complex process that requires the use of indicators that assess health both in terms of disease and of the impact the health-disease-care process has on the quality of life. The aim of the present study was to design and validate an instrument to evaluate teachers 'perceptions of oral health status. The sample comprised 78 teachers of 4 schools (province of Buenos Aires). DESIGN OF THE INSTRUMENT: (a) identification of the 5 categories that compose the instrument and can measure the object of study based on evidence; (b) creation of a questionnaire that contains 32 items by two researchers; (c) evaluation of the questionnaire by 5 professionals of 4 different professions to standardize criteria (Ventegodt et al, 2003) applying an ordinal scale. Items were reduced to 25 (Index of perception of oral health: IPOH). VALIDATION OF THE INSTRUMENT: the following parameters were evaluated: reliability employing the test-retest method at 30 days; internal consistency employing Cronbach's a coefficient (1951); content validity determined by two experts; construct validity employing the method of extreme groups (Student's t test). The established categories were knowledge on oral health, personal experience with oral health care, expectations regarding their students 'families, expectations regarding dentistry, satisfaction with his/her role as a teacher The instrument proved to be reliable as evidenced by a value of r = 0.80 in the test-retest method; a satisfactory intra-items consistency was evidenced by Cronbach's alpha coefficient value of 0.82. The differences between the results of the groups of teachers in the extreme groups were statistically significant (p = 2.2). The instrument designed to measure the teachers' perception of oral health status would be valid. It would be desirable to enlarge the sample and determine criterion validity by comparison with other instruments.