Psychometric properties of a caregiver illness perception measure for caries in children under 6 years old

• IPQ-RD: New measure to assess caregivers' perception of early childhood caries (ECC)
• Eight-factor model of illness perception, based on common-sense model, fits the data.
• 5 IPQ-RD constructs significantly related to preventive dental visits (child < 6 yrs.)
• New measure will inform interventions to restructure perception of ECC.

ObjectiveBased on the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM), the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) was developed to measure patients' perceptions of their chronic medical illness. Such a measure does not exist for dental conditions. This study describes psychometric properties of the IPQ-R for Dental (IPQ-RD) for parent/caregivers of children under 6 years of age.MethodsParent/caregivers (n = 160) of children aged < 6 years attending a pediatric dental clinic completed the IPQ-RD and a questionnaire assessing their socio-demographics, dental anxiety, oral health self-efficacy, and child's preventive dental visits. Dental charts were abstracted for child's decayed, missing, filled teeth (dmft) information. The 33-item IPQ-RD was tested for internal (construct, discriminant) and external validity (concurrent, convergent, discriminant) and reliability (internal consistency).ResultsConfirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the eight-factor model in accordance with the CSM framework (identity, consequences–child, consequences–caregiver, control–child, control–caregiver, timeline, illness coherence, emotional representations) had good construct validity based on significant factor loadings and acceptable to excellent model fit (RMSEA = 0.078, CFI = 0.951). Concurrent validity was demonstrated by significant negative correlations and higher mean factor scores for five constructs for children without dental visits indicating inaccurate caregiver perception of cavities. Discriminant validity was suggested by non-relationship with external measures (dental anxiety, self-efficacy). Internal consistency of six IPQ-RD constructs was excellent (Cronbach's alpha > 0.74).ConclusionThe IPQ-RD is a valid and reliable measure to assess parent/caregivers' representation of young children's cavities with potential to be a valuable risk assessment tool for oral health behavioral research.