Translation and Validation of Symptom Checklist-90

The Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90; Derogatis, Lipman, & Covi, 1973) is a widely used multidimensional measure for psychiatric morbidity. The present study translated and validated the SCL-90 in Urdu in two phases. Phase I included the translation of the scale by using the forward and back translation method, while Phase II dealt with the establishment of psychometric properties for SCL-90. A total sample of 367 adults with mean age of 21.46 years was drawn from different universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The Cronbach alpha coefficients of all the subscales ranged from .71 to .87. Moreover, Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed an acceptable goodness of fit indices ranging from .96 to .99 on each subscale of the SCL-90. The convergent validity indicated a significant correlation between subscales of SCL-90 and clinical scales of Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory (Mirza, 1977). In addition, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (Zafar, 2014) highly correlated with the overall subscales of the SCL-90. Furthermore, the independent sample t-test demonstrated that the individuals with psychiatric disorders significantly scored high on all the nine dimensions of the SCL-90 as compared to the healthy individuals.