Introduction:

Adherence to treatment is associated with the quality of health care given to the patient, especially in institutions with a high workload, such as dentistry schools. In these places, treatments are long and high adherence is required for them to be successful.

Objective:

To validate, by means of an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), an instrument for measuring adherence to orthodontic treatment in dental clinics of dentistry schools, where a large number of patients are treated.

Materials and methods:

Quantitative study in which an instrument was validated by performing an EFA and a CFA. A 27-item questionnaire (adapted from the original 37-item instrument) was administered to 601 patients treated at a dentistry school of a Colombian university in two different periods: during the second semester of 2018 (n=202) and during the first semester of 2019 (n=399). The EFA and the CFA were performed using the SPSS and the LISREL software, respectively.

Results:

Factor analysis established that the instrument has six factors and 25 questions suitable for collecting information on adherence to treatment by obtaining the following adjustment values: x2 SB=420.09 with d.f.=260 and p<0.05; x2 S B divided by the degrees of freedom index (X2 SB/d.f.) = 1.62; CFI=0.99; RFI=0.98; NNFI= 0.99; RMSEA=0.039 (90%CI 0.032-0.046); and SRMR= 0.057.

Conclusions:

Based on the results obtained after performing the EFA and the CFA, it is possible to conclude that the instrument is valid and highly reliable to measure orthodontic treatment in this context. Consequently, its use in similar institutions will allow determining the levels of adherence in these patients accurately, and thus, when necessary, develop and implement actions that encourage greater engagement from this population to orthodontic treatment to obtain better outcomes.

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