Thailand normative data for the SF-36 health survey: Bangkok metropolitan

Background: the medical outcomes study 36-item short form (sf-36) is a widely used measure of health-related quality of life. normative data are the key to determine whether a group or an individual score above or below the average for their country, age or sex. published norms for the sf-36 exist for other countries but have not been previously published for thailand. methods: the multi-site studies of thai quality of health were the cross- sectional study involving 1,148 randomly selected thai men and women aged 15 years or more living in bangkok metropolitan. the information collected included the sf-36, a measure of healthrelated quality of life. these provided a unique opportunity to develop age- and sex-adjusted normative data for the thai population. results: thai women scored substantially higher than men on role physical, bodily pain, role emotional and physical component summary, whereas men scored higher than women on social functioning. conclusion: the scores of bangkok people are lower than their us counterparts on all sf-36 domains, although many of the differences were not large. the differences in the sf-36 scores between age groups, sexes and countries confirm that these thai norms are necessary for comparative purposes. the data will be useful for assessing the health status of the general population and patient populations, and the effect of interventions on health-related quality of life