Development and Validation of Attitudes toward Oral Self-Care Questionnaire among 13- to 18-year-old Adolescents in Isfahan

Personal hygiene enhancement is one of the basic strategies for the management of oral diseases. Considering the great role of attitude in forming health behaviors, this study was designed to develop and validate a new questionnaire on the attitudes towards oral self-care among Iranian adolescents in Isfahan, Iran.
After item pooling, the initial version of the questionnaire was presented to an expert panel in order to determine its content validity. Face validity of the questionnaire was evaluated in a pilot study, and the final version of the questionnaire was completed by 200 adolescents randomly. Reliability coefficients and attitude scores were calculated. Construct validity of the questionnaire was also evaluated, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.
The final version of the questionnaire, consisting of 40 items, was developed with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.72. The mean age of the participants was 15.9 years, and the mean attitude score was calculated to be 104±15. The correlation between attitude score and social status was statistically significant (P=0.03), whereas no significant relationship was found between gender and attitude score. Based on the exploratory factor analysis (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure above 0.6) and significant Bartlett's test results, five factors accounted for nearly 38% of the variance in responses. The suggested model consisted of various sub-domains, including values (appearance and performance), emotions (positive and negative), parental influence, importance of social status, and knowledge about dental caries. The components were confirmed via confirmatory factor analysis and were found to have a moderate goodness of fit.
In this study, the Attitude towards Oral Self-care Questionnaire was found to be reliable. In addition, content and construct validity of this questionnaire was confirmed among Iranian adolescents.