The validity of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire in Australia: a comparison between three scoring methods.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the specificity and sensitivity of three different scoring methods of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and hence to determine the best GHQ-12 threshold score for the detection of mental illness in community settings in Australia.


METHODS
Secondary data analysis of the 1997 Australian National Survey of Health and Wellbeing (n = 10 641), using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview as the gold standard for diagnosis of mental illness.


RESULTS
The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve for the C-GHQ scoring method was 0.84 (95% CI = 0.83-0.86) compared with the area for the standard scoring method of 0.78 (95% CI = 0.76-0.80). The best threshold with C-GHQ was 3/4, with sensitivity 82.9% (95% CI = 80.2-85.5%) and specificity 69.0% (95% CI = 68.6-69.4%). The best threshold score with the standard scoring method was 0/1, with sensitivity 75.4% (95% CI = 72.5-78.4%) and specificity 69.9% (95% CI = 69.5-70.3%). These were also the best thresholds for a subsample of the population who had consulted a health practitioner in the previous 4 weeks.


CONCLUSIONS
In the Australian setting, the C-GHQ scoring method is preferable to the standard method of scoring the GHQ-12. In Australia the GHQ-12 appears to be a less useful instrument for detecting mental illness than in many other countries.
Donath
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Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, 54-62 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. susand@turningpoint.org.au
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity