Development of the Korean version of short-form 36-item health survey: Health related QOL of healthy elderly people and elderly patients in Korea

The health-related QOL (HRQOL) has been used extensively in clinical and epidemiological research and health service studies. Especially, the Medical Outcome Study Short-form 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36) is a widely used health status measure. However, a Korean version has not been developed and tested yet. The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean version of the Short-form Health Survey (SF-36) for use in health related quality of life measurements for Korean elderly people. SF-36 data from 90 healthy elderly people using Social Education Service and 120 elderly patients using a day care service in Seoul, Korea, were examined. We translated SF-36 version 2.0 into Korean and assessed its reliability and validity. In the results, the content validity and discriminant validity were found to be satisfactory. Cronbach's α coefficients ranged from 0.9298 to 0.9383. The test-retest reliability coefficients ranged from 0.710 to 0.895. In addition, the utility was examined by testing the correlation between the health-related QOL and related factors (sex, age, motor function, ability of daily life) among the elderly people. The present findings suggested that the Korean version of SF-36 would be useful as a measure of the health related QOL in Korean elderly people.