The drooling scale in ınfants and pre-school children: A study of adaptation to Turkish, validity and reliability

The aim of the present study is to make Turkish adaptation, validity and reliability of "The Drooling Infant and Preschooler scale (DRIPS)" developed by Karen.van Hulst et al. Developed in 2008, the scale provides information about drooling on the psychomotor development of children and the development of saliva control for parents and babysitters. The scale is used in the form of data collection through questions from parents, caregivers and babysitters. In the first part of the scale, which consists of three parts in total questions related to demographic and health characteristics (questions 1-7) are included. In the second part, there are questions about the frequency and severity of drooling (questions 8-16). In the third and last part, bilateral questions about drooling during teething and the common cold causing a runny nose (questions 17-20). In the study, the parents of a total of 311 children, 163 F (52.4%) and 148 M (47.6%), completed the scale. The average age of the children is 26.94 months, the youngest child is 0.33 months old and the oldest is 48 months old. The expert opinion consistency of the scale was determined as 92% [230/ (230+20)]. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) within the scope of the structure validity studies, it was found that 4 factors had an eigenvalue above 1, similar to the original form, and the total explained variance was 75.7%. The factor and question patterns obtained in the study are in complete harmony with the original form of the scale. In this study, as in the original study, the four-factor structure: Activities, Sleep, Non-Nutrition Suction and Nutrition have been supported. There was no place change in the factor structure and the distribution of the items to the factors in the original form. The items under each factor have interpretable and acceptable loads ( > 0.32; Worthington ve Whittaker, 2006). The 4-factor structure obtained explained 73,983% of the total variance, and the contribution of the first factor to this variance value was 36,696%; the contribution of the second factor was 18,095%; the contribution of the third factor was 11,563% and the contribution of the fourth factor as 7,630%. The internal consistency coefficient reached by Cronbach's alpha regarding the structure of the scale was determined as a = .887. As a result of the study, it was understood that the Drooling Scale in Infants and Preschoolers is a reliable and a valid scale in terms of linguistically, psychometrically, and sameness. Keywords: Sialorrhea, Typically development, Drooling severity, Drooling frequency, Percentile curves, Parent questionnaire