A Malay version of the Child Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (Child-OIDP) index: assessing validity and reliability

The study aimed to develop and test a Malay version of the Child-OIDP index, evaluate its psychometric properties and report on the prevalence of oral impacts on eight daily performances in a sample of 11–12 year old Malaysian schoolchildren.

The Child-OIDP index was translated from English into Malay. The Malay version was tested for reliability and validity on a non-random sample of 132, 11–12 year old schoolchildren from two urban schools in Kuala Lumpur. Psychometric analysis of the Malay Child-OIDP involved face, content, criterion and construct validity tests as well as internal and test-retest reliability. Non-parametric statistical methods were used to assess relationships between Child-OIDP scores and other subjective outcome measures.

The standardised Cronbach’s alpha was 0.80 and the weighted Kappa was 0.84 (intraclass correlation = 0.79). The index showed significant associations with different subjective measures viz. perceived satisfaction with mouth, perceived needs for dental treatment, perceived oral health status and toothache experience in the previous 3 months (p < 0.05). Two-thirds (66.7%) of the sample had oral impacts affecting one or more performances in the past 3 months. The three most frequently affected performances were cleaning teeth (36.4%), eating foods (34.8%) and maintaining emotional stability (26.5%). In terms of severity of impact, the ability to relax was most severely affected by their oral conditions, followed by ability to socialise and doing schoolwork. Almost three-quarters (74.2%) of schoolchildren with oral impacts had up to three performances affected by their oral conditions.

This study indicated that the Malay Child-OIDP index is a valid and reliable instrument to measure the oral impacts of daily performances in 11–12 year old urban schoolchildren in Malaysia.