Transcultural adaptation of the WHO oral health questionnaire and its validation in chilean children

ABSTRACT

Introduction: the last edition of the WHO "oral health questionnaire for children" was published in 2013. this is an only-english version, and as such it requires linguistic adaptation and validation to be applied in the chilean population. objectives: to translate and adapt the WHO oral health questionnaire for children to spanish and validate it in a chilean population. methods: a translation and back translation of the original instrument from english to spanish was carried out by four translators. the questionnaire was self-reported as a pilot test in ten individuals. a sample was subsequently selected for convenience taking into account the population distribution, resulting in a final sample of 103 individuals. the internal consistency was calculated with Cronbach's alpha, criterion validity with Pearson's correlation coefficient and construct validity with exploratory factor analysis. results: a conceptual and semantic equivalence of the instrument was obtained. women and men accounted for 43.69 percent and 56.31 percent of the sample, respectively. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.62, while criterion validity was slightly positive between the total dimensions and the DMFT (r=0.13, p-value= 0.20). the exploratory factor analysis yielded a total of 11 factors that explain 70 percent of the variability in the data. conclusions: the oral health questionnaire has been appropriately adapted to spanish, having conceptual as well as semantic equivalence to the original version, being reliable and valid to be used in a population of 12-year-old chilean children.