Scribd
Upload
119 views1 page

The General Health Questionnaire: A Brief History

The document provides a brief history and description of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a widely used screening tool to detect potential psychiatric disorders. It discusses the development and various versions of the GHQ, describes some example items, and outlines scoring methods. The summary also mentions the GHQ has high reliability and is commonly used in occupational research.

Uploaded by

Glad Dys
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
119 views1 page

The General Health Questionnaire: A Brief History

The document provides a brief history and description of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a widely used screening tool to detect potential psychiatric disorders. It discusses the development and various versions of the GHQ, describes some example items, and outlines scoring methods. The summary also mentions the GHQ has high reliability and is commonly used in occupational research.

Uploaded by

Glad Dys
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Occupational Medicine 2007;57:79

doi:10.1093/occmed/kql169

The General Health Questionnaire


A brief history term—whereby, if such respondents presented in general
practice, they would be likely to receive further atten-
Since Goldberg [1] introduced the General Health Ques- tion. It should be noted that the GHQ is not usually
tionnaire (GHQ), it has been translated into 38 different used for predictive purposes. If the GHQ score were
languages, testament to the validity and reliability of the compared with the results of independent psychiatric
questionnaire. assessment, it would be more likely than not (0.51) to
state that the individual would be assessed as being a
‘case’ once the threshold is exceeded.
Description

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/57/1/79/1557723 by guest on 10 December 2020


Results obtained from assessments of psychological well-
being can be useful in understanding various sources of Validity
distress for workers, as well as any predisposing factors. It
is recommended that results of such assessments not be Reliability coefficients have ranged from 0.78 to 0.95 in
used in isolation, but rather in combination with other various studies.
information which is indicative of distress or psycholog-
ical problems such as sickness absence, poor productivity
or increased turnover. Possibly, the most common assess- Key research
ment of mental well-being is the GHQ. Developed as
a screening tool to detect those likely to have or be at risk The GHQ is simple to administer, easy to complete and
of developing psychiatric disorders, it is a measure of the score and widely used in many studies of (occupational)
common mental health problems/domains of depression, well-being [2–4]. The GHQ can be scored in a variety of
anxiety, somatic symptoms and social withdrawal. Avail- ways which is useful in providing multiple outcome meas-
able in a variety of versions using 12, 28, 30 or 60 items, ures. A further advantage of the GHQ is that it is widely
the 28-item version is used most widely. This is not only used in occupational research, which allows simple
because of time considerations but also because the comparisons with results obtained in other studies. In
GHQ28 has been used most widely in other working using this tool with postgraduate students conducting re-
populations, allowing for more valid comparisons. search in many areas of occupational health, the GHQ
rarely fails to provide reliable and effective measures of
well-being that usually correlate very highly with other
Items measures of working environments or organizations.

Examples of some of the items in use include ‘Have you Craig Jackson
found everything getting on top of you?’; ‘Have you been
getting scared or panicky for no good reason?’ and ‘Have
you been getting edgy and bad tempered?’. Each item is
accompanied by four possible responses, typically being References
‘not at all’, ‘no more than usual’, ‘rather more than usual’
and ‘much more than usual’, scoring from 0 to 3, respec- 1. Goldberg DP et al. Manual of the General Health Question-
tively. The total possible score on the GHQ 28 ranges naire. Windsor, England: NFER Publishing, 1978.
from 0 to 84 and allows for means and distributions to 2. Feyer AM, Herbison P, Williamson AM et al. The role of
be calculated, both for the global total, as well as for the physical and psychological factors in occupational low
four sub-scales. Using the alternative binary scoring back pain: a prospective cohort study. Occup Environ Med
2000;57:116–120.
method (with the two least symptomatic answers scoring
3. Jones M, Rona RJ, Hooper R, Wesseley S. The burden of
0 and the two most symptomatic answers scoring 1), the psychological symptoms in UK Armed Forces. Occup Med
28- and 30-item versions classify any score exceeding the (Lond) 2006;56:322–328.
threshold value of 4 as achieving ‘caseness’. Any score 4. Stansfeld SA, Fuhrer R, Shipley MJ, Marmot MG. Work
exceeding the threshold value of 4 is classed as achieving characteristics predict psychiatric disorder: prospective
‘psychiatric caseness’. The caseness threshold is 3 for the results from the Whitehall II Study. Occup Environ Med
12-item version. Psychiatric caseness is a probabilistic 1999;56:302–307.

Ó The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Occupational Medicine.
All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]

You might also like