Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the God Locus of Health Control (GLHC): A Study on Muslim Pilgrims

God Locus of Health Control (GHLC) scale is an instrument for assessing to what extent one believes that God controls his/her health or disease. The aim of this study was to describe the cultural adaptation of this scale and to investigate the psychometric properties of Persian version. At first, the scale was forward-translated to Persian, and then, backward-translation was conducted. Finally, the synthesized back-translated version was prepared and compared to the draft Persian-language version of the GLHC. In the next step, in order to test cognitive debriefing, the Persian-language version of the questionnaire was completed by 20 pilgrims. Final version of Persian GHLC scale was answered by 600 pilgrims attending religious holy places. Mean age of respondents was 33.15 (±11.04) years. There was a positive correlation between six items of GLHC scale and inter-item correlation coefficients. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.84. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the G LHC scale had a one-factor structure. The factor loadings for all items ranged from 0.57 to 0.77. Residual correlations of all items were between −0.2 and +0.2. The people with lower income had significantly higher score of GLHC scale. GLHC scale score had a significant positive correlation with DUREL subscale and MHLC Chance Externality subscale score. There was no a significant correlation between GLHC scale score and Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) Internality and Powerful subscales scores. The results of the present study showed that the Persian version of GHLC scale has acceptable factorial validity and internal consistency reliability.