Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 2024;00:1–8. | 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cdoe Received: 18 August 2023 | Revised: 5 April 2024 | Accepted: 18 April 2024 DOI: 10.1111/cdoe.12971 ORIGINAL ARTICLE How well do parents identify their child's baby teeth? Engagement and accuracy of parent-reported information on a tooth checklist survey Mona Le Luyer 1,2 | Molly E. Boll 1 | Simone A. M. Lemmers 1,2 | Samantha J. Stoll 1 | Alison G. Hoffnagle 1 | Andrew D. A. C. Smith 3 | Erin C. Dunn 1,2 © 2024 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1 Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 2 Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 3 Mathematics and Statistics Research Group, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Correspondence Mona Le Luyer and Erin C. Dunn, Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Email: mleluyer@mgh.harvard.edu and edunn2@mgh.harvard.edu Funding information National Institutes of Health Abstract Objectives: Naturally exfoliated primary teeth are being increasingly collected in child development studies. Most of these odontological collections and tooth biobanks use parent-reported information from questionnaires or tooth checklists to collect data on offspring teeth. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no studies have assessed parental engagement in tooth checklists, nor parental accuracy in identifying their child's baby tooth. This study aimed to evaluate these dimensions by analysing data from the about this tooth checklist returned with donated primary teeth in a natural experimental study called STRONG (the Stories Teeth Record of Newborn Growth). Methods: Parental self-reported information were analysed on checklists returned with 825 primary teeth belonging to 199 children. The percentage of blank answers was calculated for each question. The accuracy of parents-reported tooth identifica- tion was evaluated by comparing parental ratings to researchers' ratings. Reliability of researchers' tooth identification was first evaluated by calculating intra-observer and inter-observer agreements, as well as Cohen's Kappa values. The percentage of accuracy of parents' tooth identification (relative to researcher's) was then calculated, and logistic regressions were used to evaluate if time elapsed between when exfolia- tion occurred and the checklist was completed associated with parental accuracy in tooth identification. Results: Parents returned 98.4% of the checklists and completed 74.9% to 97.7% of the questions. Excellent reliability was demonstrated for researchers' intra- and inter-rater tooth identification (agreement percentages >90%; Cohen's Kappa values >.83). Moderate accuracy of parents-reported tooth identifications was found, with parents correctly identifying 49.5% of the donated tooth. Better parental accuracies were highlighted for partial identifications (87.1% of correct jaw, 75.6% of correct tooth type, and 65.8% of correct lateralization). Logistic regressions showed the odds of correct parental identifications decreased on average by 1.8% every 30days of distance between tooth exfoliation and checklist completion. Conclusions: While parental engagement is high, parents-reported tooth identifica- tions have moderate accuracy, which decreases over time. High accuracy is however