Validation of 30- and 12-item versions of the Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ) in patients admitted for general health screening

A study of the validity of the 30- and 12-item versions of the Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ) was carried out with a consecutive sample of 386 patients admitted during one year to a medical centre in Taiwan for a 3-day comprehensive general health screening. The Chinese version of the Clinical Interview Schedule was used to derive a criterion measure of minor psychiatric morbidity. The areas under the Relative Operating Characteristic curves of both short versions of the CHQ were equivalent (area = 0.85, S.D. = 0.02). The sensitivities of the CHQ-30 and CHQ-12 were found to be 76 and 78% respectively, while the specificity of both was 77%. The estimated prevalence of minor psychiatric morbidity in the sample was 37% (95% confidence intervals 32-41%). In contrast, physicians diagnosed 11% of these patients as having psychiatric disorders, and their sensitivity was 29%. Taken altogether, the above findings suggest that the CHQ-12 is as effective as and is more efficient than the CHQ-30 in this context, and could be used by physicians in similar settings to improve their identification of minor psychiatric disorders in Chinese patients.