The 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12)
Clinical intent
The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a selfadministered screening questionnaire, designed for use in consulting settings aimed at detecting individuals with a diagnosable psychiatric disorder (Goldberg & Hillier, 1979). In its original version, it had 60 items (GHQ-60), which were reduced to 30 (GHQ-30), 28 (GHQ-28; in Spanish population see Gili, Ferrer, Roca, & Bernardo, 2000), and 12 items (GHQ-12) (Goldberg & Williams, 1988)
The 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) is the most extensively used screening instrument for common mental disorders, in addition to being a more general measure of psychiatric well-being. Its brevity makes it attractive for use in busy clinical settings, as well in settings in which patients need help to complete the questionnaire (Goldberg et al., 1997); its psychometric properties have been studied in various countries (Werneke, Goldberg, Yalcin, & Üstün, 2000) and with various types of population, for example, elderly people (Costa, Barreto, Uchoa, Firma, Lima-Costa, & Prince, 2006), and urological patients (Quek, Low, Razack, & Loh, 2001).
Calculation
The customary type of scores used are a bimodel scale (0-0-1-1), this means that a score of 0 and 1 is recoded to a 0, 2 and 3 to a 1. The total score is thus 12.
Pathway
Form preview
Interactive preview of the questionnaire. Not for clinical use. Responses are not stored.
