Department of Restorative Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Faculty of Medicine & Health University of Leeds, Level 6, Worsley Building, Clarendon Way, Leeds LS2 9LU, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Leeds, LS29JT, UK.
J Dent. 2024 Nov;150:105381. doi: 10.1016/j.jdent.2024.105381. Epub 2024 Sep 28.
The gold standard approach to diagnose periodontitis is based on clinical examination and radiographic investigations. This, however, is expensive, tedious, and not feasible in population-level assessments. The self-reported periodontitis questionnaire offers great benefit to facilitate larger epidemiological surveys. There is limited evidence on cognitive validation of self-reported periodontitis questionnaire. This study employed a think aloud approach to investigate if participants interpreted, comprehended, and understood the items in a self-reported periodontitis questionnaire, in the same way as researchers' intended.
20 adults, resident of the UK and fluent in English participated in online recorded think aloud interviews. The self-reported periodontitis questionnaire consists of 15 questions and 2 open ended questions. The interviews were then transcribed and coded by two independent researchers according to predefined categories representing comprehension and conventional content analysis was used to analyse open-ended data.
The think aloud approach revealed that most of the questions in the self-reported periodontitis questionnaire were well understood by the participants. Two items, however, were identified as problematic: one was misinterpreted, and another question was not understood by most of the participants. Qualitative conventional content analysis of open-ended questions reiterated and complemented the findings of the think aloud study. Further questions coded as problematic for 3 or more participants were then considered for rephrasing.
This study revealed the interpretation and understanding of self-reported periodontitis questions by English speaking UK residents and highlighted the probable reason for lower sensitivity values of the self-reported periodontitis questionnaire.
This study employed think-aloud approach to capture the thought process of the participants as they answered questions on self-reported periodontitis questionnaire. Overall, the questionnaire was well received by the participants, however, some questions were misunderstood/misinterpreted. This study highlights the potential information bias if participants do not understand the questions in epidemiological surveys.
诊断牙周炎的金标准方法基于临床检查和放射学研究。然而，这种方法昂贵、繁琐，在人群水平评估中不可行。自我报告的牙周炎问卷对于促进更大规模的流行病学调查具有重要意义。自我报告的牙周炎问卷的认知验证证据有限。本研究采用出声思维方法，调查参与者是否以与研究人员相同的方式解释、理解和理解自我报告的牙周炎问卷中的项目。
20 名居住在英国、精通英语的成年人参与了在线记录的出声思维访谈。自我报告的牙周炎问卷由 15 个问题和 2 个开放式问题组成。访谈记录然后由两名独立的研究人员根据代表理解的预定义类别进行转录和编码，并使用常规内容分析对开放式数据进行分析。
出声思维方法表明，大多数参与者很好地理解了自我报告的牙周炎问卷中的问题。然而，有两个项目被认为是有问题的：一个被误解了，另一个问题大多数参与者都不理解。开放式问题的定性常规内容分析进一步证实和补充了出声思维研究的结果。进一步将编码为 3 个或更多参与者有问题的问题重新措辞。
本研究揭示了以英语为母语的英国居民对自我报告的牙周炎问题的解释和理解，并强调了自我报告的牙周炎问卷敏感性值较低的可能原因。
本研究采用出声思维方法来捕捉参与者回答自我报告的牙周炎问卷时的思维过程。总体而言，参与者对问卷的接受程度较高，但有些问题被误解/曲解。本研究强调了在流行病学调查中，如果参与者不理解问题，可能会产生潜在的信息偏差。
