Agreement of self-reported and proposed standard on oral health among children / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To analyze the consistency between self-reported oral health and proposed standard in evaluating children oral health status, and to test whether self-reported oral health can be used in children population.@*Methods@#The clinical examination data and questionnaire data were 2 158 children aged 12-year-old in Beijing, China. Child oral health status was measured by self-reported oral health and proposed standard from World Health Organization (WHO), and was classified into "good, general, poor" based on each method. Kappa test was used to evaluate the consistency of two measurements. Using multivariate nonordinal logistic regression to identify the influencing factors of self-reported oral health, and to explore the possible reasons for the consistency differences of two measurements.@*Results@#According to the WHO standard, 25.5%, 65.3% and 9.2% children oral health were rated as good, general and poor, respectively. The proportion was 50.6%, 37.7% and 11.8% respectively based on self-report method. Kappa value for two measurements was 0.04, indicating poor agreement between two methods. Results from regression model show that both the untreated caries (OR=2.47, P<0.01) and toothache (OR=3.54, P<0.01) were associated with self-reported oral health, while not observed in periodontal health (OR=1.34, P=0.18) and oral hygiene status(OR=0.95, P=0.75).@*Conclusion@#Self-reported oral health results can reflect caries status to some extents among children, but it failed to reflect other aspects, such as periodontal health status and oral hygiene. Self-reported oral health among children should be considered based on the requirements of assessment content and accuracy in the future work.