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Aim To assess whether parents feel guilty for their children's oral problems, associating this feeling with socio‐economic, demographic, and psychological factors. Design We included 1313 parent‐and‐child pairs in this study. The children were 2–4 years old. Parents answered questionnaires on socio‐economic and demographic data, and on psychological variables. Sixteen trained dentists (κ > 0.8) examined the children for oral hygiene (the presence and absence of plaque), early childhood caries (ECC; no caries, low and high severity), malocclusion (the presence and absence), and traumatic dental injuries (TDI; the presence and absence). We analysed the data with a hierarchical regression. Results Twenty‐four percentage of parents reported feeling guilty for the oral problems in their children; 26.3% of the children presented with caries, 39.8% malocclusion, 22.9% TDI. Of the parents who felt guilty, 54% thought that their children had problems in their teeth, and most of them (82%) thought that the problem could have been avoided. The feeling of guilt in parents was significantly associated with ECC and the psychological variables: the thought that the child had problems in his/her teeth and the thought that the problem could have been avoided. Conclusion Parents feel more guilty with increased caries severity in their children, and the likelihood of feeling guilty increases when parents believe that their child has an oral problem or that this problem could have been avoided.

Screening tests for reading skills are essential instruments for teachers and professionals in educational settings. This study examines an adaptation of the lexical decision subtest of the Reading Decision Test (RDT), which has two equally weighted forms, each containing words and pseudo-words, to Brazilian Portuguese. The adaptation followed standards recommended by the international literature and was applied to a sample of 230 schoolchildren from 1 st to 5 th grades in order to analyze its initial psychometric properties. Item analysis and reading speed showed signifi cant school-year effect (p < .05). Scores on the two forms of the subtest were closely correlated. In conclusion, the RDT word decision subtest showed appropriate initial psychometric properties. Keywords: Reading disability, reading test, adaptation. ResumoTestes rápidos (screenings) de avaliação de leitura são instrumentos essenciais para professores e profi ssionais no âmbito educacional. Este estudo adaptou para o português o subteste de leitura de palavras do Reading Decision Test (RDT), o qual tem duas formas equivalentes, compostas por palavras e pseudopalavras. O processo de adaptação seguiu as regras recomendadas pela literatura internacional e foi aplicado em uma amostra de 230 escolares, do 1º ao 5º ano do ensino fundamental para analisar as propriedades psicométricas iniciais. Observou-se que as análises de itens e da velocidade de leitura mostraram efeito signifi cativo do ano escolar (p < 0,05). Verifi cou-se também forte correlação entre as duas formas do subteste. Conclui-se que o subteste de palavras do RDT apresenta propriedades psicométricas iniciais adequadas. Palavras-chave: Difi culdade de desenvolvimento de leitura, teste de leitura, adaptação.

Tests of early reading in English speakers typically rely on the capacity to read irregularly spelled words. The approach is not feasible for more regularly spelled languages. The Reading Decision Test is a group-administered test, initially developed to study reading in Kiswahili speakers. It was subsequently validated by comparing an English language version with the more standard reading tests. The main goal of the study is to test construct validity and the secondary aim is provide evidence of invariance by sex, type of school, and grade for the Letter and Word Decision tests of the Reading Decision Test's Brazilian version. The study population comprised 487 children (259 boys), from public (226) and private (261) schools, across five grades. Confirmatory factor analysis based on a Bayesian estimator was applied to two versions of the task, both of which measured performance on both the letter-based and wordbased subtasks of the test. The models for both tasks and both versions showed good fit indices after excluding a few items. Both versions and subtests showed invariance for sex, type of school, and grade allowing simple comparisons such as t test and analysis of variance procedures to be used. The absence of a precise analysis of items in an instrument has unpredictable consequences for examiners and decision making in the clinical and educational context.