ISSN 2756-3421
African Journal of Dentistry ISSN 3216-0216 Vol. 7 (6), pp. 001-006, June, 2019. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Oral cleft research: Intraobserver agreement in the use of questionnaires
Fábio Augusto de Santi Alvarenga1, Ana Lúcia Colabone de Castro Monteiro2, José Alberto de Souza Freitas3, Antonio L. Rodrigues Jr.4, Peter A. Mossey5, Camila Pinelli6 and Leonor de Castro Monteiro Loffredo6*
1Department of Restorative Dentistry, School of Dentistry of Araraquara, UNESP, Brazil.
2Universidade Nove de Julho, UNINOVE, São Paulo, Brazil.
3Hospital of Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies, Bauru, USP, Brazil.
4Department of Social Medicine, School of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, USP, Brazil.
5Department of Orthodontics, Dundee Dental School, Dundee, Scotland.
6Department of Social Dentistry, School of Dentistry of Araraquara, UNESP, Brazil.
Accepted 18 May, 2019
Abstract
In epidemiological studies, when the data is collected by interview, it is of importance to analyse the reliability of the information. This study was carried out with the purpose of examining the self-agreement of mothers in answering questions about variables of interest in oral cleft researches on two different occasions. A sample of 91 mothers of oral cleft babies were interviewed on two different occasions. The capacity of giving the same answer to questions related to heredity, type of clefts, period of gestation of the mother and birthweight were studied. The statistics type kappa (k) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ρ) by point and by 95% of confidence interval were applied. The intra-observer agreement for the variables history of oral clefts in the family, type of cleft, period of gestation of the mother and birthweight of the newborn was, respectively, κ=0.9492, κ=1.0000, κ=0.9281 and ρ=0.9996. We concluded that the background on oral cleft in the family history of patients with this anomaly is a variable with an excellent degree of reliability. Also, the information given by the mothers related to the period of gestation, type of the baby’s cleft and birthweight are reliable.
Key words: Oral clefts, cleft lip, cleft palate, registry, reproducibility.