Int J Paediatr Dent. 2025 Nov 29. doi: 10.1111/ipd.70060. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Important psychometric approaches (structural validity, measurement invariance) remain underdeveloped in measuring oral health-related quality of life, particularly for preschool children across diverse contexts.
AIM: This study aimed to evaluate the structural validity of the child’s self-reported version of the Scale of Oral Health Outcomes for 5-year-old children (SOHO-5) and test the measurement invariance from cultural and clinical/non-clinical comparison perspectives.
DESIGN: Three datasets were analysed: two from Brazil and one from the United Kingdom (UK). One Brazilian dataset was derived from clinical data collection (nbr-cl. = 193), while the others were from non-clinical epidemiological school-based studies (nbr-ncl. = 768, nuk-ncl. = 296). Dimensionality was tested through parallel analysis and confirmed by unidimensional indexes. Measurement invariance across datasets was tested via multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).
RESULTS: Unidimensionality was empirically confirmed for all three datasets. The multi-group CFA tests reached partial scalar invariance threshold between the Brazilian and UK non-clinical datasets. However, there was no scalar equivalence when comparing non-clinical with clinical datasets, neither within Brazil nor between countries.
CONCLUSION: The child’s self-reported version of the SOHO-5 is a unidimensional oral health-related quality-of-life measure that is psychometrically comparable across different cultures (partial scalar invariance), but not between clinical and non-clinical groups.
PMID:41317126 | DOI:10.1111/ipd.70060
