Validation of a persian short-form version of a standardised questionnaire assessing oral cancer knowledge, practice and attitudes among dentists

Abstract EN

Objectives : Oral cancer is a global health problem; however, many dentists lack the necessary skills, knowledge and capacity to diagnose oral cancers early.

This study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of a Persian short-form version of a standardised questionnaire to assess dentists’ knowledge, practice and attitudes towards oral cancer.

Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was carried out in May 2015 in Tehran, Iran.

An original 39-item English-language questionnaire developed by Yellowitz et al.

was translated into Persian using forward and backward translation methods.

A total of 15 dental professionals were asked to assess the questionnaire for content validity.

Based on their feedback, a 20-item short-form version was prepared, including six demographic, six knowledge, four attitude and four practice items.

The translated short-form questionnaire was subsequently distributed to 973 general dental practitioners attending a dental conference in Tehran.

Internal consistency and reliability were assessed with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and item-total correlation calculations.

Results: A total of 13 professionals and 313 general dentists participated in the study (response rates: 86.7% and 32.2%, respectively).

After the elimination of six items (two knowledge, two attitude and two practice items), the validity and reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed.

Conclusion: The final Persian 14-item version of the questionnaire had acceptable validity and internal consistency.

These results indicate that researchers can use this translated short-form version to evaluate oral cancer knowledge, attitudes and practices among Persian-speaking dentists; this will allow for a comparison of data between different populations