Uses of oral health related quality of life measures in Public Health.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this paper was to review the current status of oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) measures from a dental public health perspective.


METHODS
Three questions are posed. (1) What additional work is needed in the development or application of quality of life measures? (2) How can existing quality of life measures be used most effectively now? (3) Can existing data be used for secondary analyses of 'generic questions' concerning the relationships between oral health care and quality of life outcomes? In answering these questions, methodological issues are discussed, existing sources of data are described, and recommendations are suggested for future directions.


CONCLUSIONS
Current measures can be used for assessment of oral health impacts in adults, and to a lesser extent, for policy development. Other measures need to be developed that are relevant for children and their families, and for disease prevention and health promotion programmes. Continued psychometric analyses are needed to provide short, valid and reliable instruments that can be easily administered in public health settings. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine if the OHRQoL measures are responsive to access to dental care, different types of care including early diagnosis and treatment, and completion of care. The extensive array of existing measures need to be compared, equivalency of scores determined, and recommendations made for the appropriateness of their use in different circumstances and for different purposes.
Weintraub
J A
JA
University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry 94143-0754, USA.
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003729:Dental Care; D005544:Forecasting; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006291:Health Policy; D006293:Health Promotion; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D009909:Oral Health; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011050:Policy Making; D011313:Preventive Dentistry; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods; D011636:Public Health Dentistry; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results