IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v41y1995i10p1359-1366.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

German translation and psychometric testing of the SF-36 Health Survey: Preliminary results from the IQOLA project

Author

Listed:
  • Bullinger, Monika

Abstract

International translation and psychometric testing of generic health outcome measures is increasingly in demand. Following the methodology developed by the International Quality of Life Assessment group (IQOLA) we report the German work with the SF-36 Health Survey. The form was translated using a forward-backward method with accompanying translation quality ratings and pilot tested in terms of translation clarity and applicability. Psychometric evaluation included Thurstone's test of ordinality and equidistance of response choices in 48 subjects as well as testing of reliability, validity, responsiveness and discriminative power of the form in crossectional studies of two samples of healthy persons and longitudinal studies of two samples of pain patients totalling 940 respondents. Quality ratings of translations were favorable, suggesting a high quality of both forward and backward translations. In the pilot study, the form was well understood and easily administered, suggesting high clarity and applicability. Thurstone's test revealed ordinality (in over 90% of the cases) and rough equidistance of response choices also as compared to the American original. On item and scale level, missing data were low and descriptive statistics indicated acceptable distribution characteristics. In all samples studied, discriminative item validity was high (over 90% scaling successes) and Cronbach's [alpha] reliabilities were above the 0.70 criterion with exception of one scale. Furthermore convergent validity, responsiveness to treatment and discriminative power in distinguishing between healthy and ill respondents was present. The preliminary results suggest that the SF-36 Health Survey in its German form may be a valuable tool in epidemiological and clinical studies. However further work as concerns responsiveness and population based norms is necessary.

Suggested Citation

  • Bullinger, Monika, 1995. "German translation and psychometric testing of the SF-36 Health Survey: Preliminary results from the IQOLA project," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(10), pages 1359-1366, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:41:y:1995:i:10:p:1359-1366
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(95)00115-N
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adedokun Oluwafemi Ojelabi & Afolabi Elijah Bamgboye & Jonathan Ling, 2019. "Preference-based measure of health-related quality of life and its determinants in sickle cell disease in Nigeria," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-16, November.
    2. Hongyun Fu & Mark VanLandingham, 2012. "Mental Health Consequences of International Migration for Vietnamese Americans and the Mediating Effects of Physical Health and Social Networks: Results From a Natural Experiment Approach," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(2), pages 393-424, May.
    3. van der Schee, Evelien & Braun, Bernard & Calnan, Michael & Schnee, Melanie & Groenewegen, Peter P., 2007. "Public trust in health care: A comparison of Germany, The Netherlands, and England and Wales," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 56-67, April.
    4. Marlen Rahnfeld & Johannes Wendsche & Andreas Ihle & Sandrine R. Müller & Matthias Kliegel, 2016. "Uncovering the care setting–turnover intention relationship of geriatric nurses," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 159-169, June.
    5. Bärbel-Maria Kurth & Ute Ellert, 2002. "The SF-36 questionnaire and its usefulness in population studies: Results of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey 1998," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 47(4), pages 266-277, July.
    6. Garbuzova, Maria & Madlener, Reinhard, 2012. "Russia’s Emerging ESCO Market: Prospects and Barriers for Energy Efficiency Investments," FCN Working Papers 6/2012, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN), revised Sep 2012.
    7. Ulrich Wiesmann & Hans-Joachim Hannich, 2014. "A Salutogenic Analysis of the Well-Being Paradox in Older Age," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 339-355, April.
    8. Timothy Hasenoehrl & Margarete Steiner & Felix Ebenberger & Philipp Kull & Julia Sternik & Lukas Reissig & Galateja Jordakieva & Richard Crevenna, 2024. "“Back Health 24/7/365”—A Novel, Comprehensive “One Size Fits All” Workplace Health Promotion Intervention for Occupational Back Health among Hospital Employees," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(6), pages 1-10, June.
    9. Nickel, Stefan & Thiedemann, Birgit & von dem Knesebeck, Olaf, 2010. "The effects of integrated inpatient health care on patient satisfaction and health-related quality of life: Results of a survey among heart disease patients in Germany," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(2-3), pages 156-163, December.
    10. Myles-Jay Linton & Paul Mark Mitchell & Hareth Al-Janabi & Michael Schlander & Jeff Richardson & Angelo Iezzi & Jasper Ubels & Joanna Coast, 2020. "Comparing the German Translation of the ICECAP-A Capability Wellbeing Measure to the Original English Version: Psychometric Properties across Healthy Samples and Seven Health Condition Groups," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(3), pages 651-673, July.
    11. Johanna Höper & Lara Schraml & Janne Gierthmühlen & Stephanie M. Helfert & Stefanie Rehm & Susanne Härtig & Ove Schröder & Michael Lankes & Frieder C. Traulsen & Andreas Seekamp & Ralf Baron, 2020. "Changes of Somatosensory Phenotype in the Course of Disease in Osteoarthritis Patients," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-11, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:41:y:1995:i:10:p:1359-1366. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.