Agreement between adolescents and parents overview of oral health–related quality of life (OHRQoL)

Abstract

Introduction: OHRQoL plays an important role in understanding subjective patient evaluations of and experience with oral healthcare [1,2]. The aim is to access the agreement between adolescents and parents regarding the impact of OHRQoL. Materials and methods: A sample of 112 pairs of adolescents aged 11 to 14 years and parents, previously signed a consent form and dully completed the Portuguese version of the Parental Perceptions Questionnaire (PPQ) and the Child Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ11–14). The ethical approval was granted by ethical committee of Universidad de Sevilla. A descriptive analysis was performed using the software IBM SPSS © statistics 20.0. Results: The Cronbach’s alpha values for the respective CPQ11-14 and PPQ, were in: a) Oral Symptoms, 0.49 and 0.52; b) Functional Limitations, 0.75 and 0.66; c) Emotional Well-being, 0.91 and 0.82; d) and Social well-being, 0.81 and 0.79. The results obtained demonstrate statistically significant differences in the General Oral Health: 1.63 (±0.88), 2.11 (±0.95), p < 0.000; General Well-being 0.64 (±0.85) and 0.93 ± (0.90), p < 0.006); General Oral Health and Well-being 2.27 (±1.37) and 3.03 (±1.56), p < 0.000; and Emotional Well-being 3.04 (±4.47) and 2.28 (±3.3), p < 0.033). Discussion and conclusions: The agreement/disagreement between the assessments of the children and their parents were investigated through the domains: “General Oral Health”, “General Well-being,” Oral health & General well- being “and” Emotional well- being”. Thus, with the exception of “Emotional Well-being”, children evaluate all areas better than their parents, with less impact on OHRQoL. Finally on “Emotional Well-being”, parents evaluate this area better than their children.