Analysis of reliability and validity of SF-36 scale on self-assessment of health status among college students

Objective To assess the reliability and validity of the SF-36 scale applied in the self-assessment of health status among college students. Methods The college student samples were acquired by using the stratified sampling method, and then the health status of the samples was measured by using SF-36 scale. The reliability and validity of SF-36 scale were evaluated with the split-half reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminate validity and factor analysis. Results There were 1 579 valid questionnaires and the effective rate was 92.88%. There were 618(39.08%) men and 962(60.92%) women. The split-half reliability was 0.92, and the Cronbach's a coefficient was 0.88. The convergent validity and discriminate validity were 100% and 98.41%, respectively. The factor analysis extracted eight common factors which accounted for 59.94% of total variance. The factor load of each common factor on each item was consistent with the structure of SF-36. Conclusion The SF-36 scale possesses well reliability and validity, and it could be used in practice.