Reliability and Validity of Somali Version of the PHQ-9 in Primary Care Practice

Objectives Depression is one of the common mental health problems noticed in immigrants because of the experiences related to their resettlement which is the case for Somali population. Depression increases mortality, morbidity, disability, and costs of health care which can be controlled by screening depression in the primary care setting using a culturally and linguistically congruent screening tool. The aim of the current study is to translate the English PHQ-9 into Somali language using evidence-based translational methodology and establish psychometric properties of the Somali PHQ-9. Methods The initial validation of the Somali PHQ-9 was studied by comparing the original and back translation versions using the comparability and interpretability tool in a sample of 56 monolingual health care professionals. The reliability and validity of the Somali version were established by psychometric analysis in a sample of 47 bilingual health-care workers. Results Cronbach's alpha was 0.79 for the Somali version with the inter-item correlation mean of 0.33 and item-to-total correlation mean in the range of 0.40-0.80 ( p < 0.01). Pearson correlation for the item-to-item correlation between English and Somali version was between 0.70 and 0.93 ( p < 0.01) with the paired t-test showing no significant difference between the item means. Conclusions The Somali PHQ-9 showed a good reliability, homogeneity, and internal consistency. The construct validity for the Somali PHQ-9 was also established showing that the Somali PHQ-9 has similar reliability and validity like the other translated versions of PHQ-9.