COMPARISON OF ORAL HEALTH DATA FROM SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONNAIRE AND CLINICAL EXAMINATION

In order to assess the validity of self-reported oral health data 319 subjects randomly selected from the respondents to an oral health surv ey were examined clinically. The level of agreement between the two me thods of examination was estimated by the kappa statistic. Substantial agreement (kappa=0.65) was found between the reported and observed nu mber of remaining teeth and the difference between underreporting and overreporting was small. The results indicate that valid data for plan ning purposes and for monitoring changes in such oral health indicator s as the proportion of individuals having 28 or more teeth, the propor tion of subjects having a minimum of 20 functional teeth, the level of edentulousness and the presence of complete and partial dentures, can be obtained from postal questionnaires.