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Updated: Mar 31, 2026

Oral Health Assessment by Lay Personnel for Older Adults
Published on: February 2, 2020
Using Rasch-models to compare the 30-, 20-, and 12-items version of the general health questionnaire taking four
Rainer W Alexandrowicz1, Fabian Friedrich2, Rebecca Jahn2
1Department for Applied Psychology and Methods Research, Institute of Psychology, Alps-Adria-University of Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65, 9020, Klagenfurt, Austria. rainer.alexandrowicz@aau.at.
Background:
The present study compares the 30-, 20-, and 12-items versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) in the original coding and four different recoding schemes (Bimodal, Chronic, Modified Likert and a newly proposed Modified Chronic) with respect to their psychometric qualities.
Methods:
The dichotomized versions (i.e. Bimodal, Chronic and Modified Chronic) were evaluated with the Rasch-Model and the polytomous original version and the Modified Likert version were evaluated with the Partial Credit Model.
Results:
In general, the versions under consideration showed agreement with the model assumption. However, the recoded versions exhibited some deficits with respect to the Outfit index.
Conclusions:
Because of the item deficits and for theoretical reasons we argue in favor of using the any of the three length versions with the original four-categorical coding scheme. Nevertheless, any of the versions appears apt for clinical use from a psychometric perspective.
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