Premium
Improving dental health status indicators for evaluation
Author(s) -
Lewis Jenny M.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
community dentistry and oral epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.061
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1600-0528
pISSN - 0301-5661
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0528.1996.tb00809.x
Subject(s) - medicine , index (typography) , weighting , statistics , variance (accounting) , composite index , population , dental health , regression analysis , dentistry , composite indicator , environmental health , econometrics , mathematics , accounting , world wide web , computer science , business , radiology
Central to the evaluation of any dental health programme is the dental status of the population it serves. The DMFT index has been widely used to indicate dental status in evaluations, however, there are a number of characteristics of the DMFT index which undermine its value in evaluating programmes. The aim of this study was to compare DMFT, live utility weighted versions of this index, and single measures of caries experience, in order to determine their relative validity. The indices were investigated in terms of two criteria: 1) the percentage of variance explained by a set of antecedent and behavioural variables in a series of multiple regression analyses; and 2) percentage changes in the indices following re‐examination of the population after live years. Results show that the variance explained by the different composite indices ranged between 29% and 46%, while it varied between 16% and 49% for the single measures. The size of percentage changes after five years ranged between 0% and 4.5%, and indicated that utility weighted indices were generally not more sensitive than the DMFT, but that some single measures were. Where composite indices are required, a lull quality adjusted tooth years (QATY) approach, rather than utility weighting the DMFT index, may be required to improve the validity of dental health status indicators. Single rather than composite measures also provide valid information for evaluating dental programmes.