Validation of 12-item general health questionnaire into Kannada language

17077 Background: The cancer load in India is enormous and majority of the cases present in an advanced stage. There is no valid translation of 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) in Kannada, which is a simple but indispensable tool in the comprehensive cancer care (both for metastatic and in adjuvant settings). Therefore we thought of developing and validating the GHQ-12 Questionnaire into Kannada language. Methods: The study was conducted at kidwai memorial institute of Oncology, Bangalore, a tertiary cancer center with an annual attendance of 16,000 new cases. We have chosen educated patients who can speak and write both English and Kannada. We used ’forward-backward’ translation procedure into Kannada. We used scores from 0–3 for the Questionnaire. Total score for both languages was calculated. Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Validity was performed using convergent validity. Finally, the factor structure of the questionnaire was extracted by performing principal component analysis using oblique factor solution. Results: A total of 118 patients with various malignancies were entered into the study. The mean age was 36.8 ± 12.1 years. The mean GHQ score was 21.6 ± 9.1 for the English and 22.6 ± 8.1 for Kannada. Reliability analysis showed satisfactory result (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.79). The principal component analysis with oblique rotation solution showed that the GHQ-12 was a measure of psychological morbidity with four -factor structure that jointly accounted for 48 % of the variance. Conclusions: The Kannada version of the GHQ-12 is a reliable and valid instrument with a good structural characteristic. It can be used for measuring psychological well being at our institute for those patients who can read and write only Kannada. No significant financial relationships to disclose.