[Chinese version of SF-36 in the quality of life assessment among community-dwelling elders].
OBJECTIVE
To obtain scores in a community-dwelling population over 60 using the SF-36, to assess the reliability and validity of this general health questionnaire, and to analyze the difference in dimension scores among the elderly Chinese in Changsha.


METHODS
We randomly selected 602 elders, aged 60 to 91 years, in multi-phases. All the subjects had resided in Changsha for at least one year. The reliability of the SF-36 was assessed by split-half reliability and Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the validity through factor analysis and correlation analysis, etc. The dimension scores of different people were obtained by analysis of variance and independent-samples t-test.


RESULTS
The split-half reliability was 0.72 and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of all the 8 dimensions were more than 0.8; the Pearson correlate coefficients of all the items to their dimensions were more than 0. 59. SF-36 contained 8 domains and 2 summary scales in the factor analysis. Health-related quality was different in different elders.


CONCLUSIONS
The SF-36 is practical in studying the quality of life among community-dwelling elders.
Wei
Yi-yun
YY
Department of Epidemiology and Statistics, School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, Chira.
Yan
Yan
Y
Wang
Duo-lao
DL
Guo
Yan-fang
YF
Zhang
Lei
L
Sun
Zhen-qiu
ZQ
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003153:Community Health Services; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012494:Sampling Studies; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*