How useful are the SF-36 sub-scales in older people? Mokken scaling of data from the HALCyon programme

Mishra, Gita D., Gale, Catharine R., Sayer, Avan Aihie, Cooper, Cyrus, Dennison, Elaine M., Whalley, Lawrence J., Craig, Leone, Kuh, Diana and Deary, Ian J. , HALCyon Study Team (2011) How useful are the SF-36 sub-scales in older people? Mokken scaling of data from the HALCyon programme. Quality of Life Research, 20 (7), 1005-1010. (doi:10.1007/s11136-010-9838-7). (PMID:21225350)

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate two psychometric properties of SF-36, namely unidimensionality and reliability.

Methods: The data are from three cohorts in the HALCyon collaborative research programme into healthy ageing: Aberdeen Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 428), Hertfordshire Ageing Study (n = 358) and Hertfordshire Cohort Study (n = 3,216). The Mokken scaling model was applied to each sub-scale of SF-36 to evaluate unidimensionality as indicated by scalability. The lower bound for internal consistency reliability was determined by Cronbach’s alpha.

Results: All six sub-scales of SF-36, with the exception of general health (GH) and mental health (MH), demonstrated strong scalability (0.5 ? H < 1). The results were consistent across all 3 cohorts. Both GH and MH showed medium scalability (0.4 ? H <0.55), although individual items ‘sick easier..’, ‘as healthy as..’ and ‘expect to get worse’ of the GH sub-scale and ‘nervous’, ‘happy’ in the MH sub-scale had low scalability (H < 0.4) in the oldest cohort (aged 73–83). Cronbach’s alphas for all sub-scales were between 0.70 and 0.92.

Conclusions: The unidimensionality and reliability of the sub-scales of SF-36 are sufficient to make this a useful measure of health-related quality of life in older people. Caution is needed when interpreting the results for GH and MH in the oldest cohort due to the poor unidimensionality.

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Contributors

Author: Catharine R. Gale

Author: Cyrus Cooper

Author: Elaine M. Dennison

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