How well do parents know their children's oral health-related QoL?

Objective: to examine parental/caregiver knowledge and assess agreement between parent/caregiver and children concerning the child's oral health-related quality of life. Methods: Ethical approval was granted by the Taranaki Ethics Committee for the dental examination of a random sample of 12-13-year-olds attending intermediate schools. Parents/caregivers completed the parent's perception questionnaire (PPQ) by post. Children (N = 430; participation rate 74.1%) completed the child perception questionnaire (CPQ11-14) and were examined. Caries experience and malocclusion (Dental Aesthetic Index, or DAI; Cons et al, 1986) were recorded by a single calibrated examiner (LFP). The CPQ11-14 and PPQ are analogous questionnaires with 31 common items. Agreement between overall and subscale scores derived from the parent and child questionnaires was assessed in comparison and in correlation analyses. The former compared the prevalence of any impact, both overall and in each of the four domains using Kappa scores. The latter used intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to assess agreement at the level of individual parent/caregiver-child pairs. Results: There was a distinct gradient in mean CPQ11-14 scores across malocclusion severity categories and children in the worst 25% of the DMFS distribution also had higher CPQ11-14 scores overall and for each of the four domains. Concordance between parent and child assessments of child OHRQoL was poor for the overall score and for each of the domains. Kappa scores ranged from 0.04 to 0.15, while ICCs ranged from 0.27 to 0.46. The highest ICC was recorded for the domain “emotional well-being”. Conclusion: Parents/caregivers have limited knowledge concerning their 12-13-year-old children's oral health-related quality of life. This study was supported by the NZ Dental Association Research Foundation.