The Development and Testing of Thai Mental Health Indicator Version 2007

Abstract

Abstract
Objective: 1) To develop a new Thai Mental Health Indicator version 2007 (TMHI-version 2007) and examine the instrumentûs content validity, construct validity, reliability and normal rang 2) to deal with special situations, develop a condensed, or shorter version of the instrument, and through appropriate testing ensure that the shorter and longer versions were compatible in their results (the agreement study).
Method: The project was divided into 2 phase. In phase I, content validity study was examined by mental health experts who met for 2 times (all two phases). Phase II, the construct validity study the norms for mental health in the Thai population, and agreement study, multi-state cluster random sampling of the Thai population was performed, with 3,184 people selected and divided according to region, urban and rural residence, and economic status (level 1,2,3). TMHI scores according to domain, sex, urban-rural, and region were also studied. Factor analysis, kappa statistic and Cronbachûs alpha coefficient were used for statistical analysis.
Result : The new TMHI was successfully completed, with both full (55 items) and short (15 items) versions, with 4 domains (mental state, mental capacity, mental quality, supporting factors) and 15 sub-domains. The scores for the complete version were divided into 3 groups : better than average mental health (179-220), average mental health (158-178), and below average mental health (<157). The comparable short version scores were also divided into
3 groups : better (51-60), average (44-50) and below (<43). The substantial agreement was also found between the long and short version TMHI (kappa statistics 0.66, p<0.001).