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(Stroke. 1999;30:1213-1217.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.

Original Contributions

Replicability of SF-36 Summary Scores by the SF-12 in Stroke Patients

A. Simon Pickard, BScPharm; Jeffrey A. Johnson, PhD; Andrew Penn, MD; Francis Lau, PhD Tom Noseworthy, MD

From the Faculties of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (A.S.P., J.A.J.), Medicine and Oral Health Sciences (A.P., T.N.), and Business (F.L.), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and Institute of Pharmaco-Economics (A.S.P., J.A.J.), Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Correspondence and reprints requests to A. Simon Pickard, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2N8. E-mail spickard{at}pharmacy.ualberta.ca

Background and Purpose—The replicability of the physical and mental component summary scores of the Short Form (SF)-36 has been established using the SF-12 in selected patient populations but has yet to be assessed in stroke patients. If the summary scores of the SF-12 are highly correlated with those of the SF-36, the benefits of using a shorter health-status measure may be realized without substantial loss of information or precision. Both self-reported and proxy assessments were evaluated for replicability.

Methods—Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and linear regression were used to assess the ability of the SF-12 physical component summary (PCS-12) scores to predict PCS-36 scores and the SF-12 mental component summary (MCS-12) scores to predict MCS-36 scores. Multivariate regression was used to explore the relationship between SF-12 and SF-36 scores.

Results—The MCS-12 and PCS-12 scores were strongly correlated with the corresponding SF-36 summary scores for surveys completed by proxy or self-report (ICCs ranged from 0.954 to 0.973). Regression analysis of the proxy assessments indicated that patient age was an important effect modifier in the relationship between MCS-12 and MCS-36 scores.

Conclusions—The SF-12 reproduced SF-36 summary scores without substantial loss of information in stroke patients. Accordingly, the SF-12 can be used at the summary score level as a substitute for the SF-36 in stroke survivors capable of self-report. However, the mental health summary scores of proxy assessments are influenced by patient age, thereby limiting the replicability of the SF-36 by the SF-12 under these conditions.

Key Words: health status • quality of life • stroke outcome

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