Development and validation of Tamil version of CARIES-QC questionnaire among socially marginalized school children in Chennai City.

Abstract

The Caries Impacts and Experiences Questionnaire for Children (CARIES-QC), which was developed to assess dental caries-specific Child Oral Health Related Quality of Life (COHRQoL), has been translated into few world languages. To develop and validate the Tamil version of Caries Impacts and Experience Questionnaire for Children (CARIES-QC). This cross-sectional study was conducted among socially marginalized school children in Chennai City. The initial translation of the English CARIES-QC questionnaire to Tamil was made by two independent translators followed by an expert committee discussion to derive a prefinal version of the Tamil questionnaire. Subsequently, content validation was performed by bilingual subject experts followed by preliminary pilot testing among 30 school children aged 8-10 years studying in Adidravidar Welfare High School, Chennai, to produce the final version of the questionnaire. Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and test-retest reliability of the translated questionnaire were tested among 191 children. The content validation process revealed that the translated version had relevant questions and content coverage (Scale-wise Content Validity Index score = .91). The children with and without dental caries had mean CARIES-QC scores of 5.39 + 3.7 and 3.71 + 5.1, respectively, and their statistically significant difference (p-value = .04) between them indicates the scale's satisfactory discriminant validity. The Cronbach's alpha was .87 indicating the questionnaire's good internal consistency. The newly developed Tamil CARIES-QC questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool for assessing COHRQoL among Tamil-speaking school children.