Cross-Cultural Validation of the Scale of Oral Health-Related Outcomes for 5-Year-Old-Children with a Low-Income Sample from the Dominican Republic.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To conduct a thorough psychometric assessment and validation of a Spanish-adapted version of the Scale of Oral Health-Related Outcomes for 5-Year-Old-Children (SOHO-5).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample consisted of 69 children aged 6 and 7 years attending a public school from a low-income community in the Dominican Republic. Outcomes consisted of SOHO-5 test scores and caries lesion severity scores, with the latter measured according to the International Caries Detection and Assessment System criteria. The IBM SPSS Statistics 20 and Mplus 7.4 programs were used for the statistical analyses.

RESULTS: A confirmatory factor analysis revealed an excellent fit for the theoretical one-factor structure of the SOHO-5, with all the items having high loadings on this latent factor. In addition, the SOHO-5 was able to significantly explain a large amount of variance (37%) in caries lesion severity (P < 0.001), while its scale scores had good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha [α] = 0.85, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.79-0.90). Further, the SOHO-5 could identify children with moderate and extensive caries lesions (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.82, 95% CI 0.70-0.94, P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: The current findings highlight the good psychometric properties and criterion-related validity of the Spanish-adapted SOHO-5 for young children who come from impoverished backgrounds.