I will be running a general health survey in Southern Brazil with elders over 60 years old and I am including questions (10) related to oral health, because we will not be able to perform clinical examination I am considering the self-reporting tooth loss and prosthesis use. I have experience with clinical examination of these data, but not with self-reporting and its validity. Thanks.
Hi, Flávio,
Well, I have been using self-reported number of teeth for a while. Researchers have used the real number of teeth, but most popular are 4 to 5 point scales. Many studies have validated such measures, but not in a easy way to understand. See:
- UNELL L, SODERFELDT B, HALLING A, PAULANDER J , BIRKHED D. Oral disease, impairment, and illness: congruence between clinical and questionnaire findings. Acta Odontol Scand 1997; 55: 127-132.
- PITIPHAT W, GARCIA RI, DOUGLASS CW , JOSHIPURA KJ. Validation of self-reported oral health measures. J Public Health Dent 2002; 62: 122-128.
- GILBERT GH, CHAVERS LS , SHELTON BJ. Comparison of two methods of estimating 48-month tooth loss incidence. J Public Health Dent 2002; 62: 163-169.
At the end of the day, the message is: people do not know exactly how many teeth they have and the mean error is to add 4 teeth (e.g. 10missing teeth is reported to be only 6). Personally, I think this is acceptable, specially if you have a 5 or 4 point scale.
I believe that the measurement bias may be related to levels of education, but also about the number of missing teeth. I have been trying to do sobre new research to validate this to the Brazilian standards. I may be easier to put such question in surveys from IBGE.
Good work.
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