Serbian Translation and Validation of the SF-36 for the Assessment of Quality of Life in Patients with Diagnosed Arterial Hypertension

Precise estimation of life quality is of special importance in patients with chronic diseases, such as arterial hypertension. There are many questionnaires for that purpose. Short-form 36 (SF-36) with 8 domains has been proved as one of the most appropriate. To date, there was no translated and validated SF 36 in Serbian language for hypertensive patients. The aim of this study was to test validity and reliability of SF-36 in Serbian patients with diagnosed arterial hypertension. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was calculated to assess the internal consistency of the Serbian version of the SF-36. After deducting the overlap between each of the 36 items and its related domain, the collective validity was considered to be good if the correlation coefficient remains > 0.4. Only 2.54% answers on the questions were missing. Values of all the 8 domains were higher in men than in women. Cronbach alpha coefficient was high for SF-36, 0.897, and it suggesting that the SF-36 had good internal reliability. All 8 domains showed high values non-rotating factorial weights (>0.300) (range from 0.742-0.856), and all measure the same thing. It means that all components in this questionnaire measure the things they are assigned to.