Validation of the Chinese version of the Halitosis Associated Life-quality Test (HALT) questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Halitosis Associated Life-quality Test (HALT) questionnaire.

METHODS: A total of 106 patients with oral malodour were recruited to complete the questionnaire after its translation and cross-cultural adaptation. The reliability of the Chinese version of the HALT was evaluated using internal consistency and test-retest methods. Both construct validity and discriminative validity were adopted to evaluate the validity of the HALT.

RESULTS: The Cronbach's alpha value (internal reliability) for the total HALT score was 0.95, and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) value (test-retest reliability) was 0.89 (95% CI = 0.74-0.98). The construct validity was determined by exploratory factor analysis. Four factors were extracted, which accounted for 85.18% of the variance. All items had factor loadings above 0.40, ranging from 0.53 to 0.94. In addition, the Chinese version of the HALT was found to be valid for distinguishing patients with different degrees of oral malodour.

CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the Chinese version of the HALT has satisfactory psychometric properties and is applicable to patients with oral malodour in Chinese-speaking populations.