Development of Urdu Version of Short Form 36 Health Questionnaire; Validation and Reliability Analysis in Healthy Population

The 36-item Short Form Health Survey is a brief self administered questionnaire that generates scores across eight dimensions of health: physical functioning (PF), role limitations due to physical problems (RP), bodily pain (BP), general health (GH), vitality (VT), social functioning (SF), role limitations due to emotional problems (RE), mental health (MH), and one single item scale on health transition. It has proved useful in monitoring population health, estimating the burden of different diseases, monitoring outcomes in clinical practice, and evaluating treatment effects. The improved longevity suggests that health status can no longer be well assessed by population mortality statistics; there is a consensus to view health in terms of people's subjective assessment of wellbeing and ability to perform social roles the centrality of people's point of view in monitoring health related quality of life has led to the proliferation of instruments and a rapid development of theoretical literature. Interest in measuring the aspects of health most closely related to quality of life usually referred to as health-related. Quality of life (HR-QOL) has increased in recent years in Pakistan as in other countries. Advances have been made in methods for describing patients' subjective health status using standardized measures, and several valid and reliable patient- based measures are available either as generic or disease and treatment targeted questionnaires. However, most of these are in English and are intended for use in English-speaking settings.With few but relevant exceptions that were actually translated or developed as part of Multilanguage and multinational projects. Most of such efforts were produced by isolated groups of researchers who seldom published their findings in peer-reviewed journals. Among the so-called generic measures, the MOS 36- Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) is known for its comprehensiveness, brevity, and high standards of reliability and validity. It was first translated by independent Italian teams in 1990. With the launch of the International Quality of Life Assessment (IQOLA) project. The reliability and validity of the SF-36 have been well documented by the developers of the instrument. A comparison of a series of generic health status measures indicated that the SF-36 is not only psychometrically sound but is also more responsive to clinical improvement than the other instruments tested. Moreover, health functioning changed in the hypothesized direction with increased age, socioeconomic status and disease status in a population-based longitudinal study of the SF-36, which suggests that the instrument is sensitive to changes in the health of the general population. The SF-36 has been cross- culturally translated and Adapted to many cultures and languages. To the Author's knowledge, there is no version of SF-36 in Urdu. Lack of Urdu version of the SF-36 impedes comparison of interventions performed in Urdu rehabilitation clinics with those performed elsewhere.