Psychometric Properties of the Patient's Health Questionnaire in a Sample of Colombian Chronically Ill Patients

The Patient Health Questionnaire is an instrument to assess people's depression. Despite its wide international use, studies are unknown on its psychometric properties in the Colombian population with chronic diseases.

To estimate the content, construct, convergent, and internal consistency validity of the Patient Health Questionnaire.

A sample of 575 individuals selected by opportunity was taken. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was administered by means of a structured survey through the Internet. Content validity was assessed through relevance, clarity, accuracy, and comprehension by judges; then, a confirmatory factor analysis was applied to estimate construct validity. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to estimate construct validity. Convergent validity was estimated with the emotional thermometer, GAD-7 and ASA-R. Finally, internal consistency was estimated through the Omega Coefficient.

Assessment of the relevance, clarity, precision, and comprehension of the items had results ranging on average between 0.89 and 1. The confirmatory factor analysis showed a two-factor structure with a good fit according to different incremental, absolute, and parsimony fit indices. Internal consistency showed a satisfactory result for the total scale (0.83).

The new version of the questionnaire has adequate metric properties and is recommended for use in the Colombian population with chronic diseases.