Development and validation of the Italian version of the "Parental perceptions of silver diamine fluoride dentinal color changes" questionnaire.

Background The original English version of the questionnaire "Parental perceptions of SDF's dentinal 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 was equal to 0.91 and sphericity Bartlett test was statistically significant (p=0.001), 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=0.0001). Different age, educational level, family income of the parents did not produce statistically significant different scores on any of the subscales (p> 0.05; 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.