A Validated Questionnaire for Quantifying Skin Oiliness

Increased sebum production is a common skin complaint and plays an important role in acne and oily scalp conditions. To choose the correct skin care products, which mostly are marketed for dry, oily or normal skin, the consumer must self-assess their skin type. Studies show that individuals incorrectly self-assess their sebum secretion levels. In order to be able to correctly determine skin oiliness, we have developed a six-item skin oiliness scale (SOS) that correlates with sebumeter measurements. The resulting correlation was 0.54, which was significantly different from zero (p < 0.01). This result indicates a strong relationship between the SOS scores and the associated sebumeter measurements. This is easy to administer questionnaire to accurately determine skin oiliness and can be useful in screening and recruiting patients for research trials, performing outcome research, and recommending skin care products and procedures. Our study shows that this skin oiliness scale is an accurate way to identify and quantify skin oiliness.