Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2004, 203(3)

Development of the Korean Version of Short-Form 36-Item Health Survey: Health Related QOL of Healthy Elderly People and Elderly Patients in Korea

CHANG-WAN HAN,¹ EUN-JOO LEE,² TSUTOMU IWAYA,³ HITOMI KATAOKA and MASAHIRO KOHZUKI

Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai 980-8574,
¹School of Health and Welfare, Woosong University, Daejeon, Korea,
²Division of Neuropsychology, Department of Disability Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai 980-8574, and
³Department of Functional Training, National Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled, Tokorozawa 359-8555

The health-related QOL (HRQOL) has been used extensively in clinical and epidemiological research and health service studies. Especially, the Medical Outcome Study Short-form 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36) is a widely used health status measure. However, a Korean version has not been developed and tested yet. The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean version of the Short-form Health Survey (SF-36) for use in health related quality of life measurements for Korean elderly people. SF-36 data from 90 healthy elderly people using Social Education Service and 120 elderly patients using a day care service in Seoul, Korea, were examined. We translated SF-36 version 2.0 into Korean and assessed its reliability and validity. In the results, the content validity and discriminant validity were found to be satisfactory. Cronbach’s α coefficients ranged from 0.9298 to 0.9383. The test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from 0.710 to 0.895. In addition, the utility was examined by testing the correlation between the health-related QOL and related factors (sex, age, motor function, ability of daily life) among the elderly people. The present findings suggested that the Korean version of SF-36 would be useful as a measure of the health related QOL in Korean elderly people.

keywords —— SF-36; Korea; health-related quality of life; stroke

© 2004 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Address for reprints: Masahiro Kohzuki, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-1 Seiryomachi, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8574, Japan.

e-mail: kohzuki@mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp