Long term evaluations of impacts of community
based health promotion programmes are not an easy or
straightforward task to do due to lack of validated and
reliable indices. Objective: To develop and test an index
to measure schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge,
attitudes, and behaviour as a result of a school-based health
promotion programme in Malaysia called the Doktor
Muda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP). Materials and
Methods: The index was developed in English based on
the DMP module and translated into Malay. The Malay
version was tested on 174, 11-12 year old schoolchildren.
Psychometric analysis of the index involved content and
face validity tests as well as factor analysis, internal and
test-retest reliability. Results: Factor analysis yielded 3
factors with groups of items viz. oral health knowledge
(OHK), oral health attitudes (OHA) and oral health
behaviour (OHB). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the
three factors were 0.61, 0.73, and 0.64, respectively. The
Kappa coefficients were 0.70, 0.77 and 0.73, respectively
(intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.72, 0.70 and 0.78).
The final questionnaire comprised 33 items, namely; OHK
11 items, OHA 15 items, and OHB 7 items. Conclusion:
The Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (HPQI) to
measure the DMP impact on schoolchildren’s oral health
knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours was empirically
verified to be valid and reliable for use among 11-12 year
old Malaysian schoolchildren.