Evaluation of Subjective Oral Health Status Indicators

OBJECTIVES: This paper reports the results of a study to evaluate the performance of a battery of subjective oral health status indicators originally developed for use in large scale surveys of older adults. The aim was to assess their generalizability, efficiency, reliability, and validity when used in a study of adults aged 18 years and over and to compare their performance with respect to younger and older adults. METHODS: Data were collected by means of a mail survey and self-complete questionnaire of a random sample of the population aged 18 years and older. RESULTS: The results suggested that the measures were sensitive to the oral health concerns of adults of all ages and that item nonresponse was within acceptable limits. Test-retest and internal consistency reliability statistics were good and all hypotheses designed to assess concurrent and construct validity were confirmed. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm an earlier, but more limited, evaluation and suggest that these indicators are useful for descriptive oral health surveys of general populations.