Abstract
The aim of this study was to estimate the reliability, validity and factorial invariance of the Portuguese version of the Geriatric/General Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) as applied to Brazilian women. A total 701 women over 18 years of age participated in this study. Telephone interviews were conducted. We evaluated the construct-related validity through factorial, convergent and discriminant validity. We carried out a confirmatory factor analysis using the χ2/df, CFI, GFI and RMSEA indexes. The invariance of the model in a second independent sample was estimated by multi-group analysis and internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Items 5 and 9 presented factor weights below the adequate value and were removed. The three-dimensional and unifactorial model presented an adequate fit. We observed strong factorial invariance of the models in two independent samples (three-factor: ρλ = 0.62; pCov = 0.89, one-factor: ρλ = 0.81; pCov = 0.68) and weak factorial invariance between users and nonusers of dental prosthetics (three-factor: ρλ = 0.55; pCov = 0.01, one-factor: ρλ = 0.51; pCov = 0.02). The convergent validity was suboptimal. Internal consistency was adequate. The GOHAI applied to the study sample showed adequate reliability, factorial validity and stability in independent samples and between users and nonusers of dental prosthetics in both the three-dimensional and the unifactorial structures.
Highlights
The assessment of oral health and its impact on the quality of life of individuals is an important step in health care practices, and some measuring instruments have been proposed in the literature to perform this assessment
The General Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) was initially proposed in English by Atchison and Dolan[2] for the U.S population, but currently has versions adapted for different countries, namely Sweden,[3] Malaysia,[4] Saudi Arabia,[5,6] Germany,[7] France,[8] Romania,[9] China,[10] India,[11] Turkey,[12] Mexico[13] and Brazil.[14]
As far as we know, this is the first study that has ever evaluated the psychometric properties of the data gathered with the Geriatric/General Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI), applied to Brazilian women
Summary
The assessment of oral health and its impact on the quality of life of individuals is an important step in health care practices, and some measuring instruments have been proposed in the literature to perform this assessment. Turkey[12] and Mexico[13] included the assessment of the oral health perception construct as evidence of factorial validity Even these studies did not perform confirmatory factor analysis, which should have been adopted, considering that the theoretical construct had been previously defined by Atchison and Dolan.[2] It should be noted that the confirmatory factor analysis, based on the theoretical construct defined by the scale’s authors, is required to evaluate the validity of the data gathered. This analysis strategy is still unusual in the medical literature, psychometrics states that it is essential in order to clarify the metric characteristics of the scales in different samples, because it is the only way to assess the quality of the information obtained
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