ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the reliability and validity of SF-36 in patients with advanced schistosomiasis,so as to proride scientific basis for the selection of suitable tools for health measure.Methods A Chinese version of SF-36 scale was applied to evaluate the health of patients with advanced schistosomiasis by a household survey in Hanshou County of Hunan Province and Jiangling County of Hubei Province,then the reliability and validity of the scale were tested.Results Atotal of 326 patients were investigated in the two counties.The split-half reliability(with a split-half coefficient of 0.95) and the internal consistency (Cronbach'α coefficients of the eight dimensions ranged from 0.86 to 0.88)were satisfying;the convergent and discriminative validity were high with the test successful rates of 97.14%and 87.86%,respectively;the criterion validity was acceptable with a correlation coefficient between the total score of SF-36 and EQ-5D+C VAS score of 0.70.However,the construct validity seemed to be not so reasonable as only 2 dimensions out of 8 were completely in accordance with the theoretical model on factor loading.The percentages of floor effect and ceiling effect in most dimensions were not significant except RP and RE(with the percentages of floor effect of 50.31%and 48.16%,respectively).Conclusions SF-36 is appropriate to be used in patients with advanced schistosomiasis.but some items need to be improved according to the local settings of endemic areas.