A Critical Review of Dimension-Specific Measures of Health-Related Quality of Life in Cross-Cultural Research

This article reviews six dimension-specific health-related quality of life (HRQL) measures which have been used cross-culturally. The instruments reviewed are: the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ); the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D); the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS); the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ); and the Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWB). These instruments primarily represent the psychological or emotional dimension of HRQL, and are scales that were developed and validated in the USA, Canada or the UK. The review of specific studies for each of the six instruments was not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to give an indication of the ways in which the instruments have been assessed or used in various countries. The focus throughout this article is on the psychometric properties (reliability, validity and responsiveness) of these scales in different cultures, as well as the processes used to translate the instruments from English into another language. Implications of the results of this review for cross-cultural use of dimension-specific HRQL instruments are drawn.