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The Factor Structure of the Turkish Version of the General Health Questionnaire

Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, and Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit, 110 Nicholson St., Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia 3065

S. Klimidis

Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, and Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit

I.H. Minas

Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit

C. Tuncer

Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit

The 60-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was translated into Turkish and administered to a community sample of 437 Turkish-speaking immigrants resident in Melbourne, Australia. The factor structures of the 60-item and 28-item versions of the GHQ were examined to determine the cross-cultural validity of the four subscales of the 28-item GHQ "anxiety/insomnia", "social dysfunction", "severe depression" and "somatic complaints". Four-factor principal components analyses yielded factors which corresponded to similar underlying traits, but the pattern of symptom loadings differed in several ways. Insomnia was less closely associated with anxiety, and general illness ratings such as "not feeling perfectly well" were not uniquely associated with somatic symptoms. The "anxiety/insomnia" and "severe depression" factors overlapped, with many symptoms partially correlated with both factors. These factors appeared to be due to variations in the frequency of occurrence of these symptoms rather than a qualitative distinction between anxiety and depression.

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 39, No. 4, 274-284 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/002076409303900404


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