The Translation and Psychometric Assessment of the Persian Version of the Sheehan Disability Scale

OBJECTIVE: The Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS) assesses disability in four domains of home management, work responsibilities, close relationships and social life. The main objective of this study was to develop the Persian version of the SDS. METHOD: Two steps of field work followed the Persian translation and cultural adaptation of the tool: First, the internal consistency and convergent validity was examined in 104 clinical cases recruited from inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services, using 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). Then 88 individuals were randomly selected from the adult general population to assess internal consistency, inter-rater reliability and known group validity. RESULTS: In the clinical settings, Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.88 and item-total correlation ranged from 0.71 to 0.78 in various domains. The correlation between SDS and SF-36 (P< 0.001) was significant in all the areas of the performance; and neither of the correlations was statistically significant when SDS and GAF were compared. In the general population study, the SDS met a good internal consistency (α = 0.81) and known group validity, and the inter-rater reliability was perfect for “school/work responsibility .” CONCLUSION: The Persian translation of the SDS is a simple and short scale, and it seems to be a valid scale for the measurement of disability in clinical settings and in the Iranian general population.