Agreement between children and parents in rating oral health-related quality of life using the Swedish versions of the short-form Child Perceptions Questionnaire 11–14 and Parental Perceptions Questionnaire

Abstract

Objective: To explore the agreement between children and parents on children’s oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) when using the Swedish short forms of CPQ_11–14 and P-CPQ, and to evaluate the impact on agreement of oral health including malocclusion and background characteristics (dental fear, family situation, gender of informant).

Material and methods: A total of 257 children and their accompanying parents were asked to fill in the Swedish versions of the short-form CPQ_11–14 and P-CPQ separately in connection with a clinical examination.

Results: The participants comprised 247 child-parent pairs: 116 (47%) boys, 131 (53%) girls, 166 (67%) mothers and 81 (33%) fathers. The agreement between the child and parental ratings of the children’s OHRQoL was low, with an ICC of 0.22 (95% CI: 0.04–0.37) for the total scale.

Conclusions: There was a low agreement between children’s and parents’ answers. For best care, it is advisable to consider perceptions of both children and parents because they can complement each other in estimating the child’s OHRQoL.