Introduction: The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) is a self-administered questionnaire to screen and detect individuals with a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. This study was designed to validate the Persian translated version of the short 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) for use with the Iranian elder population.
Method: A forward-backward translation method was performed to ensure the quality of the English to Persian translation. A sample of 300 Iranian elder (60 years and over) people was selected from locations known to be frequented by older adults residing in three cities in Iran. Factor of the GHQ-12 was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were measured by estimating the Cronbach's alpha and Spearman correlation coefficients, respectively.
Results: The study participants included 157 (52.3%) men and 143(47.7%) women with an average age of 66.5 years (SD = 5.5). Cronbach's alpha for Social dysfunction, psychological distress and overall score were 0.80, 0.78 and 0.82, respectively. The test-retest correlation coefficients among two sub-scales of the GHQ-12 as well as the overall scores ranged from 0.84 to 0.93. CFA revealed a good fit for a modified 12-item two-factor structure.
Conclusion: The Persian version of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire was found to be valid and reliable for measuring general health of Persian speaking elderly populations.
Keywords: Confirmatory analysis; GHQ-12; elderly; factor structure; psychometrics.