title: The Bengali Short Form-36 was acceptable, reliable, and valid in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop a culturally adapted Bengali version of the Short Form-36 (SF-36) Health Survey and to test its acceptability, reliability, and validity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
  
  
  METHODS
  The US English SF-36 was translated into Bengali after established cross-cultural adaptation procedures. The questionnaire was interviewer administered to 125 consecutive outpatients with RA and readministered after 2 weeks to 40 randomly selected patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most participants (86.4%) did not have any problem in understanding the Bengali SF-36 and 98.4% of the questionnaires were fully completed. Only the role-physical and role-emotional scales showed substantial floor and ceiling effects. Principal component analysis confirmed that the hypothesized two-factor structure and tests of scaling assumptions were 100% successful for all eight scales expect physical functioning (98.8%) and general health (77.5%). Cronbach's α was higher than 0.78 and the test-retest reliability was high (r>0.82) for all scales. Correlations with other disease activity parameters were generally as expected and summary scores were able to discriminate between relevant subgroups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The interviewer-administered Bengali SF-36 appears to be an acceptable, reliable, and valid instrument for measuring health-related quality of life in Bangladeshi patients with RA. The questionnaire should be further evaluated in people from the general population and in patients with different medical conditions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
authors.forename: Abu H M
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Feroz
authors.forename: Md Nazrul
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Islam
authors.forename: Peter Meindert
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: ten Klooster
authors.forename: Mahmud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hasan
authors.forename: Johannes J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Rasker
authors.forename: Syed A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Haq
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001459:Bangladesh; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014177:Translations; D055815:Young Adult