Validation of a child dental pain questionnaire instrument for the self-reporting of toothache in Children

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to test the reliability and validity of a novel child dental pain questionnaire (child-DPQ).

Methods: The child-DPQ is structured to measure toothache using 3 subscales: (1) prevalence; (2) severity; and (3) impact on daily life. It was tested on 174 8- and 9-year-old children. The instrument's reliability was assessed by testing internal and test-retest consistency, and its validity was assessed by testing construct and discriminant validity. Specifically, discriminant validity was tested by comparing the mean scores of 2 clinical groups: (1) absent or treated caries (N =110); and (2) untreated caries (N =64).

Results: Internal consistency was confirmed by a Cronbac's alpha coefficient of 0.93. Test-retest reliability was found to be highly reproducible (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.99). The construct validity was satisfactory, demonstrating highly significant correlations among the global indicator, the total score, and subscale scores (P<.001). The child-DPQ score was able to discriminate between the 2 clinical groups (P<.001).

Conclusion: The present study provides evidence for the reliability and validity of the child dental pain questionnaire in assessing the impact of toothache on the daily life of children.