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.