Dental discomfort questionnaire evaluation of Turkish validity and reliability: Pilot study

In this study; Dental Discomfort Questionnaire (DDQ), which developed to survey preschool children's dental pain is evaluated to determine the reliability and validity of Turkish version. The study included 120 patients in the ASA1 risk group between the ages of 2-6 (mean 3.84 years), who applied to Başkent University Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Pediatric Dentistry between January 2017 and October 2017. Culturally adapted questions were answered by parents before any dental interventions were undertaken. In the reliability part of study, internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest consistency was assessed by Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (CCT). The validity of the Turkish version of the DDQ assessed by Spearman's correlation coefficient between total score and dmft score. Although there was no statistical significant difference between the Turkish version of DDQ scores and the dmft index (p = 0.111), it was found that there was a positive correlation between them (r = 0.145). When the reliability and internal consistency analysis were performed with Cronbach's Alpha coefficient, no items were extracted from the questionnaire because the extraction of the items in the study did not cause any significant change. Likewise, the internal consistency value was 0.813. The test-retest consistency coefficient was 0.988 (p <0.001). There was no significant difference between total DDQ scores of female (7.78 ±5.16) and male (8.67 ±5.05) children in Turkish version of DDQ (p> 0.05). DDQ total score does not change according to sex. It was seen that there is an opposite relationship between the Turkish version of DDQ and age, that the scores decrease with increasing age. As a result, it was determined that the Turkish version of DDQ is a useful measurement tool with statistically high indicators of validity and reliability. Key words: Dental Discomfort Questionnaire, Dental pain in children, pain assessment methods.