Hugh Silk, MD, MPH: No financial relationships to disclose
Abstract: Objectives: To modify and validate a shorter version of the 14-item Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) to ease the burden for pregnant persons, clinicians, and researchers, and further improve this popular measure.
Methods: We re-examined OHIP-14 data from 291 pregnant persons focusing on the relationship with overall oral health assessing anchor items for content validity, on item variability for discrimination ability, and with the intention to make the new measure shorter. We examined the factor structure of the remaining items through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and assessed the reliability by Cronbach’s alpha. Finally, we compared the correlations with overall health between the original OHIP-14 and the shortened versions’ dimension scores.
Results: Only 4 of the 14 items had a correlation coefficient with overall oral health greater than 0.20, (i.e. truly “oral health-related”). They also have the least flooring or ceiling effects. Factor analyses indicated all 4 items were measuring a single construct, with salient factor loadings of 0.46, 0.76, 0.85, and 0.86 (all p < 0.01). The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.69. We named this shorter version the MOHIP-4P; its’ score is more closely correlated with overall oral health, with a correlation coefficient of 0.31, compared to the average of 0.20 from the 7 original OHIP-14 dimension scores, which is a 55% improvement.
Conclusions: The much shorter MOHIP-4P is less burdensome, has higher validity and adequate reliability, relates closer to oral health, and can be routinely used in clinic settings to assess the OHQOL for pregnant persons given its brevity.
