Abstract Background Dental disease and treatment experience can negatively affect the oral health related quality of life (OHRQL) of preschool aged children and their caregivers. Currently no valid and reliable instrument is available to measure these negative influences in very young children. The objective of this research was to develop the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) to measure the OHRQL of preschool children and their families. Methods Twenty-two health professionals evaluated a pool of 45 items that assess the impact of oral health problems on 6-14-year-old children and their families. The health professionals identified 36 items as relevant to preschool children. Thirty parents rated the importance of these 36 items to preschool children; 13 (9 child and 4 family) items were considered important. The 13-item ECOHIS was administered to 295 parents of 5-year-old children to assess construct validity and internal consistency reliability (using Cronbach's alpha). Test-retest reliability was evaluated among another sample of parents (N = 46) using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results ECOHIS scores on the child and parent sections indicating worse quality of life were significantly associated with fair or poor parental ratings of their child's general and oral health, and the presence of dental disease in the child. Cronbach's alphas for the child and family sections were 0.91 and 0.95 respectively, and the ICC for test-retest reliability was 0.84. Conclusion The ECOHIS performed well in assessing OHRQL among children and their families. Studies in other populations are needed to further establish the instrument's technical properties
