Psychometric analysis of general health questionnaires-12 in Malaysian banking context

Abstract

The 12 - item General Health Questionnaire is widely used as a screening tool in non - psychiatric setting. GHQ - 12 was employed as a unidimensional and multidimensional measures to detect psychological distress. In Malaysia, the best factor structure of the GHQ - 12 is still unclear, especially in the working population. The current intended to study the validity and reliability of GHQ - 12 , and testing the single factor, two - factor and three - factor models among banking employees in Malaysia. This study involves 306 employees who work in a domestic bank in Malaysia. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed using AMOS 22 to analyse the construct validity of the GHQ - 12. In this study, the GHQ - 12 was tested as a single, two - and three - factor model . The finding of this study indicated that the two - factor model fitted the data better than the other two models. The two - factor model yielded a good fit, high reliability and satisfactory construct validity. The two factors were Anxiety/depression and Social dysfunction with consisted of six items each. The study findings showed that the Malaysian version of the GHQ - 12 is a reliable and valid instrument that can be used for measuring psychological work - related psychological distress in Malaysia, specifically in banking context.