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BMC Medical Research Methodology
Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Research article

Addressing challenges of validity and internal consistency of mental health measures in a 27- year longitudinal cohort study – the Northern Swedish Cohort study

Authors: Anne Hammarström, Hugo Westerlund, Kaisa Kirves, Karina Nygren, Pekka Virtanen, Bruno Hägglöf

Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

Background

There are inherent methodological challenges in the measurement of mental health problems in longitudinal research. There is constant development in definitions, taxonomies and demands concerning the properties of mental health measurements. The aim of this paper was to construct composite measures of mental health problems (according to today’s standard) from single questionnaire items devised in the early 1980s, and to evaluate their internal consistency and factorial invariance across the life course using the Northern Swedish Cohort.

Methods

All pupils in the last year of compulsory school in Luleå in 1981 (n = 1083) form a prospective cohort study where the participants have been followed with questionnaires from the age of 16 (in 1981) until the age of 43 (in 2008). We created and tested the following composite measures from self-reports at each follow-up: depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, functional somatic symptoms, modified GHQ and positive health. Validity and internal consistency were tested by confirmatory factor analysis, including tests of factorial invariance over time.

Results

As an overall assessment, the results showed that the composite measures (based on more than 30-year-old single item questions) are likely to have acceptable factorial invariance as well as internal consistency over time.

Conclusions

Testing the properties of the mental health measures used in older studies according to the standards of today is of great importance in longitudinal research. Our study demonstrates that composite measures of mental health problems can be constructed from single items which are more than 30 years old and that these measures seem to have the same factorial structure and internal consistency across a significant part of the life course. Thus, it can be possible to overcome some specific inherent methodological challenges in using historical data in longitudinal research.
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Metadata
Title
Addressing challenges of validity and internal consistency of mental health measures in a 27- year longitudinal cohort study – the Northern Swedish Cohort study
Authors
Anne Hammarström
Hugo Westerlund
Kaisa Kirves
Karina Nygren
Pekka Virtanen
Bruno Hägglöf
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Medical Research Methodology / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2288
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-015-0099-6

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