CARIES-QC-U
The Caries Impacts and Experiences Questionnaire for Children - Utility Version (CARIES-QC-U) is an adaptation of the original CARIES-QC instrument, led by Dr Helen Rogers with funding from the NIHR.
About
Original instrument
This doctoral project investigated the impact of dental caries on children using qualitative techniques and developed a caries-specific oral health-related quality of life measure. CARIES-QC was developed for self-completion by children aged 5-16 years. CARIES-QC contains 12 items and one global question.
The items are scored on a 3-point Likert scale and scored 0-2, with increasing score indicating increased impact (possible total score range 0–24). As the measure is unidimensional, a conversion scale is available to convert the raw ordinal score to an interval score to allow accurate calculation of change scores and effect sizes.
CARIES-QC is available in English and Dutch.
Utility version
The adapted instrument was developed with active involvement of children and young people at every stage, and is suitable for use in economic evaluations of interventions to prevent and manage tooth decay (dental caries) in 5-16-year-olds.
Currently both a UK adult and adolescent value set are available; the former was obtained using discrete choice experiments with a duration attribute, while the latter was obtained using best-worst scaling methods, following which the preferences were mapped onto the 0-1 dead to full health scale for Quality Adjusted Life Years using the adult values for anchoring purposes only.
Both value sets and the algorithm are available upon request, using the enquiry form below.
Visual summary
The following animation and visual summary were created in collaboration with Research Retold (2023).
[ANIMATION TBD]
Publications
The key publications related to this body of research are listed below.
H.J. Rogers, H. D. Rodd, J. H. Vermaire, K. Stevens, R. Knapp, S. El Yousfi, and Z. Marshman. A Systematic Review of the Quality and Scope of Economic Evaluations in Child Oral Health Research. BMC Oral Health (2019) 19.1:132. Web.
Rogers HJ, Gilchrist F, Marshman Z; Rodd H, Rowen D. Selection and validation of a classification system for a child-centred caries-specific preference-based measure. Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes 2020:4(105) DOI: 10.1186/s41687-020-00268-9
Rogers, H.J., Marshman, Z., Rodd, H. et al. Discrete choice experiments or best-worst scaling? A qualitative study to determine the suitability of preference elicitation tasks in research with children and young people. J Patient Rep Outcomes 5, 26 (2021).
Rogers, H.J., Sagabiel, J., Marshman, Z. et al. Adolescent valuation of CARIES-QC-U: a child-centred preference-based measure of dental caries. Health Qual Life Outcomes 20, 18 (2022).