Background: Oral-Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) instruments are being used with increasing frequency in oral health surveys. However, these instruments are not available in all countries or all languages. The availability of cross-culturally valid, multi-lingual versions of instruments is important for epidemiological research. The Child Perceptions Questionnaire 11-14 (CPQ11-14) is an OHRQoL instrument that assesses the impact of oral conditions on the quality of life of children and adolescents. The objective of the current study was to carry out the cross-cultural adaptation of CPQ11-14 for the Brazilian Portuguese language.
Methods: After translation and cross-cultural adaptation, the CPQ 11-14 was tested on 160 11-to-14-year-old children who were clinically and radiographically examined for the presence or absence of dental caries. The children were receiving dental care at the Pediatric Dental and Orthodontic clinics of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. To test the quality of the translation, 17 children answered the questionnaire. The internal consistency of the instrument was assessed by Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient and the test-retest reliability by Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC).
Results: The mean CPQ11-14 score were 24.5 [standard deviation (SD) 18.27] in the group with caries and 12.89 [SD 10.95] in the group without caries. Median scores were 20 and 10 in the groups with and without caries, respectively (p < 0.001). Significant associations were identified between caries status and all CPQ domains (p < 0.05). Internal reliability was confirmed by a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.86. Test-retest reliability revealed satisfactory reproducibility (ICC = 0.85). The questionnaire proved to be a valid instrument. Construct validity was satisfactory, demonstrating highly significant correlations with global indicators for the total scale and subscales. The CPQ11-14 score was able to discriminate between different oral conditions (groups without and with untreated caries).
Conclusion: The present study demonstrated that the CPQ11-14 is applicable to children in Brazil. It has satisfactory psychometric properties, but further research is required to evaluate these properties in a population study.