[The Polish Version of the SF-36v2 Questionnaire for the Quality of Life Assessment]

The American questionnaire SF-36 Health Survey is a worldwide tool used to assess the quality of life. It becomes increasingly popular also in Poland. Unfortunately, the existing Polish studies that used the questionnaire are not entirely reliable because different linguistic versions have been applied in the studies. The basic psychometric properties, like reliability and validity estimates of these versions have not been defined. The goal of the paper is to present the study aimed at evaluating the Polish version that has been acquired at The Qualitymetric--the unique entitled distributor of the SF-36v2--in terms of its utility for the Polish population. One thousand seventy six people took part in the study. On the basis of this study, the factor analysis, discriminant validity of the items and reliability and validity tests have been performed. The results showed that the factor structure of the Polish version of SF-36v2 differs from its original American version. However, it has been decided to maintain the original subscales in the Polish version of SF-36v2 in order to make comparisons between the Polish data and the data available abroad. The reasonable indicators of validity and reliability of the Polish version of SF-36v2 do support this decision. Nevertheless, some caution is recommended while interpreting the results of this version.