Development and validation of the Italian version of the ‘Parental Perceptions of Silver Diamine Fluoride Dental Color Changes’ questionnaire

Background: The original English version of the questionnaire ‘Parental Perceptions of SDF's Dental Color Changes’ was used among parents in the New York City metropolitan area. Aim: To develop an Italian version of the questionnaire and to assess its validity. Design: The construct validity and the internal consistency were assessed in a convenience sample of Italian parents of 251 young healthy children seen at the University of Bologna and Pisa. Forward-backward technique was carried out for the translation of the questionnaire. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was equal to 0.91, and Bartlett's test of sphericity was statistically significant (P =.001), so the items were treated with the exploratory principal component analysis (PCA). Results: Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.69 to 0.95. PCA demonstrates that all the items load on the first component (87% of explained variance). All the Spearman correlation coefficients between each subscale (positive scenario: 0.563; negative scenario: 0.665) and the general acceptability showed significant correlation (P =.0001). Different age, educational level, and family income of the parents did not produce statistically significant different scores on any of the subscales (P >.05; Mann-Whitney test). Conclusion: The Italian version of the questionnaire showed high internal consistency and construct validity and was appropriate to be used in an Italian population.