RESUMO
PURPOSE: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale. METHODS: Using translation,back -translation, quality evaluation,cross-cultural adaptation and pre-assessment, a Chinese draft scale of the ECOHIS was obtained, then applied to two groups of children. One group was 200 pre-school children which were randomly selected from 2 kindergartens of Chengdu city; the other group was 100 patients aged 3-5 years old from the paediatric dentistry of West China College of Stomatology,Sichuan University. After their guardians accomplished the questionnaires, the collected data was analyzed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale. RESULTS: The Chinese version of the ECOHIS showed the following psychometric properties from 97.3% valid questionnaires. The Cronbach's alpha ,split-half reliability and correlation of the scale was 0.899,0.799 and 0.666,respectively. By factor analysis of construct validity,the 13 items were classified into 3 domains, the cumulative proportion was 63.87%.The scale had certain logical relation between the items in the same domain. Each item of the scale was sensitive to discriminate the Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL)between general population and patients(P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The Chinese version of ECOHIS had a good reliability and validity by rigorous psychometric properties.It can be widely used to test the OHRQoL of pre-school children.
