Validity of General Health Questionnaire (Ghq-36/Ghq-12) in the Psychiatric O.P.D. of a General Hospital—a Pilot Study

Objective: The authors examined the variability of the validity of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) on two different occasions. Method: The subjects were 120 pregnant women attending an antenatal clinic of a general hospital in Japan. The GHQ was distributed twice—in the first and third trimesters. They were then interviewed by a psychiatrist blind to the GHQ scores using the standard and the “change” version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS). Results: Of the 120 women, 108 and ninety-eight completed the GHQ and were successfully interviewed in the first and third trimesters, respectively. Seventeen percent (18/108) and 13 percent (13/98) women were given RDC diagnoses in the first and third trimesters, respectively: They were designated as cases. Despite a satisfactory discriminatory power of the GHQ on the first occasion [1], the validity measures of the GHQ on the second occasion were generally poor. Thus, the sensitivity was 39 percent and specificity 82 percent for the cut-off point of 7/8. Conclusions: The GHQ should be validated separately when distributed repeatedly to the same subjects.

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The validity of three different versions of the general health questionnaire among general hospital inpatients

European Psychiatry ◽

10.1016/s0924-9338(11)72243-x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 26 (S2) ◽

pp. 536-536

Author(s):

F. Friedrich ◽

R. Alexandrowicz ◽

N. Benda ◽

M. Krautgartner ◽

G. Cerny ◽

...

Keyword(s):

General Hospital ◽

General Health ◽

General Health Questionnaire ◽

Health Questionnaire ◽

Scoring Methods ◽

Scoring Method ◽

Final Sample ◽

Validity Indices ◽

Research Interview ◽

Hospital Inpatients

ObjectiveOriginally, the General Health Questionnaire (= GHQ) was designed to detect mental disorders among general medical outpatients and in community. The aim of the present survey is to compare the criterion validity indices of three different GHQ versions among general hospital inpatients when using different scoring methods.MethodThe GHQ-30 was filled in by inpatients prior to the research interview. For psychiatric case-identifiation the Clinical Interview Schedule was performed by three research psychiatrists.ResultsThe final sample consisted of 993 inpatients. When comparing the three different GHQ-versions, no significant differences were found in OMR and ROC-AUC as well as in sensitivity (0,612–0,701) and specificity (0,601–0759). When comparing the four scoring methods no significant differences were found in sensitivity. By contrast, OMR and specificity showed better indices for the 20 item and 12 item GHQ versions when using the bimodal and modified Lickert scoring method. Further, the Lickert scoring method showed no significant differences to the other scoring methods for the GHQ-30, where as the modified Lickert and the bimodal method showed lower OMR and higher specificity compared to the chronic method.ConclusionDue to the results of this survey, the future use of the chronic scoring method for the GHQ has to be questioned when used for general hospital inpatients.

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