Development and Validation of Tamil Version of Ecohis Scale T Ecohis: A Cross Sectional Study

The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) has been developed in English for determining oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in the children of age between 3-12years. It has been translated and validated in different languages to suit different Cultures. The ECOHIS is, till date, the only tool available for research in this field on children. A similar version of this tool is not available for use in the local language Tamil. This study aimed to develop and validate a Tamil version of the ECOHIS (T-ECOHIS). The ECOHIS was translated into Tamil by forward-backward translation and tested for face and content validity. The parents of 100 children were administered the T-ECOHIS. The children were examined for the presence of early childhood caries (ECC) which was recorded using the DMFS and PUFA index. Data were analysed by chi-squared test. The mean of dmft and pufa in children was 1.44 +/- 1.21 and 0.10 +/- 0.3 6 respectively. The internal consistency reliability of the ECOHIS was tested with the help of Cronbach's alpha test and item total correlation. The cronbach's alpha value of the ECOHIS scale was marked to be 0.735.