Abstract

RIBEIRO, José Luís Pais. Mental health inventory: adaptation study to the portuguese population. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2001, vol.2, n.1, pp.77-99. ISSN 1645-0086.

The objective of the present study is to describe the characteristics of the Portuguese version of the Mental Health Inventory (MHI) and of the short form of five items (MHI-5). A convenience sample includes 609 healthy students, 53% female, aged between 16 and 30 years. MHI is a self-report questionnaire, with 38 items and a Likert type response with five or six positions. It was developed for the Health Insurance Study by Rand Corporation, for epidemiological research, and adopts both a positive and negative point of view in the evaluation of mental health. It includes five dimensions; three negative and two positive. The MHI-5 is a brief version of the 38 item questionnaire for the purpose of evaluating the same content of the larger version. We inspected the reliability with Cronbach Alpha and the construct validity with self-referent measures (like self-efficacy and self concept) and with health measures. Results show reliability measures above .80, and moderate correlation with comparison measures. The MHI-5 shows the same pattern as that of the longer form and the correlation between the long and short form is of r=.95. Results are similar to those of the original version.

Keywords : Assessment; Mental health; Questionnaire validation.

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