Objectives: To translate The World Health Organization quality of life scale, WHO-QOL BREF, in Urdu and validate it.
Design: A descriptive study.
Place and duration of study: Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lahore, from July 2002 to October 2002.
Materials and methods: The English version of WHO-QOL BREF was translated in Urdu and later back translated. The process was checked and evaluated at each step by a translation committee comprising of group of bilingual experts. The whole process was carried out in four stages. The translated version was further evaluated statistically in three ways to check linguistic equivalence, concept equivalence and scale equivalence.
Results: A significant level of equivalence was seen at all parameters.
Conclusion: This study concludes that the Urdu version of WHO-QOL BREF is a reliable and valid version to be used in our population to measure the quality of life in Pakistan.