Psychometric evaluation of a short-form version of the Swedish “Attitudes to and Knowledge of Oral Health” questionnaire

Abstract

Background Healthcare professionals’ attitudes to and knowledge of oral health are fundamental to providing good oral health care to older adults. One instrument that assesses healthcare professionals’ attitudes to and knowledge of oral health in a Swedish context is the “Attitudes to and Knowledge of Oral health” (AKO) questionnaire. Two of the three item-groups of the AKO have previously been validated in a Swedish context. However, it is crucial that all three item-groups are validated, and beneficial to design a shorter, easy-to-use questionnaire for healthcare professionals while maintaining adequate integrity of its reliability and validity. Therefore, the present study aims to develop a short-form version of AKO and to secure its psychometric properties. Methods Psychometric evaluation with Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory to validate and shorten AKO with 611 healthcare professionals from a population of 1159 working in a municipality in an urban area in western Sweden. Results Of the original 16 items in the AKO, 13 were shown to warrant retention in the abbreviated/shortened form. These showed acceptable validity and reliability for assessing healthcare professionals’ attitudes to and knowledge of oral health. Conclusion This validated short-form version of AKO shows acceptable validity and reliability after being reduced to 13 items, structured in a 3-part scale. The items are consistent with the total scale, indicating that the internal consistency is acceptable. Future studies should be performed to evaluate AKO in other groups of healthcare professionals, across cultures, languages, and so on, to investigate its use and strengthen its validity and reliability.

Impacts on oral health attitude and knowledge after completing a digital training module among Swedish healthcare professionals working with older adults

“…The AKO assesses healthcare professionals’ attitudes to and knowledge of oral health and advocates 13 items in a short form in three subject groups: (1) Attitudes to oral hygiene, three items graded on a Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always), lower scores signify a better attitude to oral health (min 3 to max 15); (2) Implementation possibilities, four items on a Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always), high scores signify better implementation possibilities (min 4 to max 20); and (3) Knowledge of importance, six items on a Likert scale from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (important), high scores signify knowledge importance (min 6 to max 30). These three subject groups are considered to be three key concepts and have acceptable validity and reliability for assessing healthcare professionals’ attitudes to and knowledge of oral health [ 27 , 28 ]. The questionnaire is described in Appendix 1 .…”