The Short Form-12 Health Survey was a valid instrument in Chinese adolescents

Objective: To evaluate the construct validity of the standard Chinese Short Form (SF)-12v2 in adolescents. Study Design and Setting: Data collected from the Hong Kong Student Obesity Surveillance project conducted in 2006-2007 were used The standard Chinese SF-12v2 was first evaluated against clinical criteria previously used for the evaluation of SF-12 or SF-36 The data were then randomly split Into training and validation halves for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, respectively Results: A total of 31,357 adolescents with mean age of 14.8 years (standard deviation = 1.9: range = 11.0-18.9) were included. The standard Chinese SF-12v2 effectively distinguished groups differing in doctor-diagnosed health problems. self-reported illnesses in the past 30 days, gender, perceived health in the past 3 months, and health compared with that 12 months back The mental health scale had low internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0 34) The exploratory factor analysis was influenced by method effects, but confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized latent structure and the one-factor structure of the SF-12v2, providing fit indices within acceptable limits Conclusion: The two components and a single general health component of the standard Chinese SF-12v2 are appropriate health indicators for Chinese adolescents (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved