THE RELIABILITY OF INTERVIEW DATA FOR AGE AT WHICH INFANTS TOOTHCLEANING BEGINS

A number of studies have reported on the age at which toothbrushing st arted and drawn important conclusions. Such studies often relied on pa rental recall of a particular event that occurred some years previousl y, assuming the quality of retrospectively reported data. The present study aimed to investigate consistency of reporting the age at which t oothcleaning began. Mothers from two different cultural backgrounds, 1 00 Caucasian and 150 Asian living in a deprived inner city area, were interviewed in their homes on two separate occasions, when the sample child was 6-24 months old and again at 3-4 years. Of the 39 Caucasian and 31 Asian mothers who specified an age at which toothbrushing comme nced at both interviews, complete agreement occurred among 4 (10%) Cau casian and 2 (6%) Asian mothers, with a variation of +/- 2 months amon g 12 (31%) and 5 (16%) respectively. Intraclass correlation coefficien ts were -0.01 for Caucasian and -0.46 for Asian mothers. Kappa values were 0 and -0.09 respectively. Of the 139 mothers who stated that thei r children's teeth were not cleaned at the time of the first interview 17 claimed an earlier age than this at the second interview. It was c oncluded that there was Little agreement between the two interviews, a lthough the extent of the variation differed between the two cultural groups. Although these findings represent relatively deprived populati on groups, caution is recommended in unquestioningly accepting the acc uracy of retrospective reporting of oral hygiene practices in dental s urveys until evidence of better reliability is available.