Summary
The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the Self Report Questionaire (SRQ-20) were simultaneously validated against the criterion of the Revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R) in a primary care clinic in Santiago, Chile. A Relative Operating Characteristic (ROC) analaysis was used to determine the optimal threshold point for case definition and to compare the performance of these two questionnaires. The validation coefficients for the GHQ-12 and the SRQ-20 were, respectively: sensitivity 76% and 74%; specificity 73% and 77%; overall misclassification rate: 26% and 25%. Misclassification by these questionnaires was significantly associated with education and sex, males being more likely than females to be misclassified as false negatives and poorly educated respondents as false positives. The symptom response profile of both questionnaires showed that the most prevalent items were psychological complaints of anxiety and depression. Both instruments seem to have a similar ability to identify minor psychiatric disorders in primary care in Chile.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Chan DW, Chan TSC (1983) Reliability, validity and the structure of the General Health Questionnaire in a Chinese context. Psychol Med 13: 363–371
Dhadphale R, Ellison RH, Griffin L (1983) The frequency of psychiatric disorders among patients attending semi-urban and rural general out-patients clinics in Kenya. Br J Psychiatry 142: 379–383
Dohrenwend BP (1990) ‘The problem of validity in field studies of psychological disorders’ revisited. Psychol Med 20: 195–208
Fleiss JL (1987) The design and analysis of clinical experiments. Wiley, New York
Goldberg D, Cooper B, Eastwood M, Kedward H, Shepherd M (1970) A psychiatric interview suitable for using in community surveys. Br J Society Preventive Med 24: 18–26
Goldberg DP (1972) The detection of psychiatric illness by questionnaire. Oxford University Press London
Goldberg D, Huxley P (1980) Mental Illness in the Community: The pathway to psychiatric care. Tavistock Publications, London and New York, pp 57–58
Goldberg D, Williams P (1988) A user's guide to the General Health Questionnaire. NFER-NELSON, Windsor, UK
Goodchild ME, Duncan-Jones P (1985) Chronicity and the General Health Questionnaire. Br J Psychiatry 146: 55–61
Guarnaccia PJ, Angel R, Lowe Worobey J (1989) The factor structure of the CES-D in the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: the influences of ethnicity, gender and language. Soc Sci Med 29: 85–94
Guarnaccia PJ, Good BJ, Kleinman A (1990) A critical review of epidemiological studies of Puerto Rican Mental Health. Am J Psychiatry 147: 1449–1456
Hanley JA, McNeil JB (1983) A method of comparing the areas under receiver operating characteristic curves derived from the same cases. Radiology 148: 839–843
Harding TW, De Arango MV, Baltazar J et al (1980) Mental disorders in primary health care: a study of their frequency and diagnosis in four developing countries. Psychol Med 10: 231–241
Hobbs P, Ballinger CB, Smith DMW (1983) Factor analysis and the validation of the General Health Questionnaire in women: a general practice survey. Br J Psychiatry 142: 257–264
Hobbs P, Ballinger CB, Greenwood C, Martin B, et al (1984) Factor analysis and the validation of the General Health Questionnaire in men: a general practice survey. Br J Psychiatry 144: 270–275
Jenkins R (1985) Sex differences in minor psychiatric morbidity. Psychol Med [Suppl] 7
Leff J (1981) Psychiatry around the globe: a transcultural view. Marcel Dekker, New York
Lewis G, Pelosi AJ, Araya RI, Dunn G (1992) Measuring psychiatric disorder in the community: The development of a standardised assessment for lay interviewers. Psychol Med 22: 465–486
Mari JJ, Williams P (1985) A comparison of the validity of two psychiatric screening questionnaires (GHQ-12 and SRQ-20) in Brazil, using Relative Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. Psychol Med 15: 651–659
Mari JJ, Williams P (1986a) Misclassification by psychiatric screening questionnaires. J Chronic Dis 39: 371–378
Mari JJ, Williams P, (1986b) A validity study of a psychiatric screening questionnaire (SRQ-20) in primary care in the city of Sao Paulo. Br J Psychiatry 148: 23–26
Medina-Mora M, Padilla GP, Campillo-Serrano C et al (1983) The factor structure of the GHQ: a scaled version for a hospitals general practice service in Mexico. Psychol Med 13: 355–361
Metz CE, Wang PL, Kronman HB (1984) ROCFIT. Department of Radiology and the Franklin McLean Memorial Research Institute. University of Chicago.
Penayo U, Kullgren G, Caldera T (1990) Mental disorders among primary health care patients in Nicaragua. Acta Psychiatr Scand 82: 82–85
Sen B, Wilkinson G, Mari JJ (1987) Psychiatric morbidity in primary health care: a two-stage screening procedure in developing countries. Cost-effectiveness and choice of instruments. Br J Psychiatry
Statistics and Epidemiology Research Corporation (1989) EGRET. Version 0.25.1', SERC, Seattle, Wash
Torres P, Alvarez V (1987) Validez de un cuestionario para detectar desordenes emocionales (GHQ-12) en estudiantes universitarios: comunicación preliminal. Rév Psiquiatr 4: 255–264
Trucco M, Campusano ME, Larrain S (1979) Un cuestionario para detectar desordenes emocionales. Estudio de validación preliminar. Rev Chil Neuropsiquiatr 17: 20–25
Tyrer P (1982) Anxiety states. In: Paykel ES (ed) Handbook of affective disorders. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh
Vazquez-Barquero JL, Diez-Manrique JF, Pena C et al (1986) Two stage design in a community survey. Br J Psychiatry 149: 88–97
Wing JK, Cooper JE, Sartorius N (1974) The measurement and classification of psychiatric symptoms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Wing JK, Nixon JM, Mann SA, et al (1977) Reliability of the Present State Examination (Ninth Edition) used in a population study. Psychol Med 7: 505–516
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Araya, R., Wynn, R. & Lewis, G. Comparison of two self administered psychiatric questionnaires (GHQ-12 and SRQ-20) in primary care in Chile. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 27, 168–173 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00789001
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00789001