ArticleHealth and quality of life outcomes2020
Validation of the SF12 mental and physical health measure for the population from a low-income country in sub-Saharan Africa.
Article in Health and quality of life outcomes, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Measuring health-related quality of life in Africa: a systematic review of validated disease-specific and generic measurement tools.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- The worse the better? Quantile treatment effects of a conditional cash transfer programme on mental health.Health policy and planning · 2020Trial
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- A cross-sectional observational study of quality of life in adult short bowel syndrome patients: What role does autologous gut reconstruction play?Nutrition in clinical practice : official publication of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition · 2025Observational
- Prevalence and early-life predictors of adverse childhood experiences: Longitudinal insights from a low-income country.Child abuse & neglect · 2024Article
- Resilience, Accelerated Aging and Persistently Poor Health: Diverse Trajectories of Health in Malawi.Population and development review · 2023Article
- Depression, Alcohol Use, and Sexual Behaviors by HIV Infection Stage and Diagnosis Timing Among STI Clinic Patients in Lilongwe, Malawi.AIDS and behavior · 2023Article
- Grading disorder severity and averted burden by access to treatment within the GBD framework: a case study with anxiety disorders.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2023Article
- Patients' priorities around drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment: A multi-national qualitative study from Mongolia, South Africa and Georgia.Global public health · 2023Article
- Multimorbidity and adverse longitudinal outcomes among patients attending chronic outpatient medical care in Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia.Frontiers in medicine · 2023Article
- Multimorbidity and health-related quality of life among patients attending chronic outpatient medical care in Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia: The application of partial proportional odds model.PLOS global public health · 2022Article
- Pain Is Widespread and Predicts Poor Mental Health Among Older Adults in Rural Malawi.Innovation in aging · 2022Article
- Health screening for emerging non-communicable disease burdens among the global poor: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa.Journal of health economics · 2021Article
- Cohort profile: the mature adults cohort of the Malawi longitudinal study of families and health (MLSFH-MAC).BMJ open · 2020Article
- The Psychological Benefits of Marriage and Children in Rural Malawi.Studies in family planning · 2020Article
- Exploring Lifestyle Correlates of Mental Health Among Low-Income Filipino Men in Rural Areas.American journal of men's healthArticle
- Marital dissolutions and changes in mental health: Evidence from rural Malawi.Demographic researchArticle
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4 authors.
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Abstract
introductionThe Short Form Survey 12-item (SF12) mental and physical health version has been applied in several studies on populations from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the SF12 has not been computed and validated for these populations. We address in this paper these gaps in the literature and use a health intervention example in Malawi to show the importance of our analysis for health policy.
methodsWe firstly compute the weights of the SF12 physical and mental health measure for the Malawian population using principal component analysis on a sample of 2838 adults from wave four (2006) of Malawian Longitudinal Study of Aging (MLSFH). We secondly test the construct validity of our computed and the US-population weighted SF12 measures using regression analysis and Fixed Effect estimation on waves four, seven (2012) and eight (2013) of the MLSFH. Finally, we use a Malawian cash transfer programme to exemplify the implications of using US- and Malawi-weighted SF12 mental health measures in policy evaluation.
resultsWe find that the Malawian SF12 health measure weighted by our computed Malawian population weights is strongly associated with other mental health measures (Depression:-0.501, p = < 0.001; Anxiety:-1.755; p = < 0.001) and shows better construct validity in comparison to the US-weighted SF12 mental health component (rs = 0.675 versus rs = 0.495). None of the SF12 measures shows strong associations with other measures of physical health. The estimated average effect of the cash transfer is significant when using the Malawi-weighted SF12 mental health measure (treatment effect: 1.124; p = < 0.1), but not when using the US-weighted counterpart (treatment effect: 1.129; p > 0.1). The weightings affect the size of the impacts across mental health quantiles suggesting that the weighting scheme matters for empirical health policy analysis.
conclusionMental health shows more pronounced associations with the physical health dimension in a Low-Income Country like Malawi compared to the US. This is important for the construct validity of the SF12 health measures and has strong implications in health policy analysis. Further analysis is required for the physical health dimension of the SF12.
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