Psychometric properties and factor invariance for the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28): study in Peruvian population exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Rita J. Ames-Guerrero
  2. Victoria A. Barreda-Parra
  3. Julio C. Huamani-Cahua

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Abstract

Large-scale epidemics are known to significantly disrupt the mental health and perceived well-being of most populations. In spite of the wide range of screening tools, there are not many reliable and widespread tools for the identification of psychological symptoms in non-clinical populations during a health crisis.

Objective

The aim of this study was to conduct a psychometric analysis of the Goldberg’s GHQ-28 (1) through a sample of Peruvian adults using confirmatory factor analysis.

Materials and methods

434 individuals have been examined, studying the goodness and structure of the Goldberg GHQ-28 questionnaire.

Result

We found high reliability indicating optimal values (α by Cronbach = .829), also there are four correlated factors that show strict invariance among the 28 items. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used to examine the structure of the subscales. There are high levels of anxiety (X=1.01) and social dysfunction (X=1.21) in the assessed sampling.

Conclusion

The factorial structure obtained in this study is similar to that originally described by the researchers involved in the original questionnaire. It is concluded that GHQ-28 is suitable to explore prevalence of psychopathologies in emergency contexts and social isolation for general non-psychiatric population.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.10.20229435: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: The study population was made up exclusively of people (18 years old) able to give their informed consent through a convenient snowball sampling process.
    IRB: The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Catholic University of Santa María (ref. no 167-2020).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableThe sample is made up by general population (n=434) where 61.3% are women and 38.7% men.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Among the possible limitations, the validation of the GHQ-28 cannot be considered representative of the entire Peruvian population, given the non-probabilistic nature of the sample, the non-inclusion of participants of various ethnicities and languages; Future studies could focus on the population with low economic resources, in marginal urban areas, with low academic achievements, and without connection to wireless networks. Even though, it is not a random and large population-based study, our sample represents Peruvians from various departments of Peru.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.10.20229435v1 on medRxiv