Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the psychometric
properties of the Turkish version of the SF-12 Health - a widely used
scale that assesses health - related quality of life - and to assess whether
its psychometric properties are as good as with the 36 items long version
(SF-36).
Method: The study included a total of 190 participants including 138
young adults aged from 18 to 29 years (22.04±2.35) and 52 older adults
aged from 60 to 80 years (67.27±5.22). The relationships between
EQ-5D-3L, CES-D and SF-12 scales were investigated for content,
convergent and divergent, criterion-related and the known-groups
construct validity. In order to assess reliability, internal consistency
and item-total correlation coefficients were calculated and test re-test
analyses were conducted.
Results: The internal consistency coefficients of the scale were found to
be satisfactory (for the components α=0.73 and 0.72). Consistent with
the original study, physical and mental components of the SF-12-TR
were found to be strongly correlated with the components of the SF-
36 and explained, respectively, 86.6% and 92.4% of the variance. The
components of the SF-12-TR were found to be moderately or strongly
correlated to the sub-dimensions of the EQ-5D-3L and CES-D, which
measure the same structures, while they were unrelated or weakly
correlated with the sub-dimensions measuring different structures.
Conclusion: The findings indicated that the psychometric properties of
the Turkish form of SF-12-TR are similar to the original version, and
the SF-12-TR can be used as an alternative to the SF-36-TR in clinical
and research settings in our country.
Keywords: The SF-12-TR, reliability, validity, the SF-36-TR