Validity and reliability of the Persian version of the dizziness handicap inventory

Background: Dizziness as a common symptom affecting many aspects of the patient’s life and it is hard to be fully evaluated. The dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) is a reliable self-perceived questionnaire in the evaluation of dizziness impacts. The purposes of this study are translation of the DHI to Persian language and measuring its psychometric properties, including face, content, discriminate and construct validity, internal consistency and reliability. Materials and Methods: The English version of the DHI is translated to Persian language based on international quality of life assessment protocol. 97 participants, including 57 patients with mean age of 44.5-year-old and 40 healthy people (mean age of 34.1) participated in this study during the period of November 2012 to June 2013 in audiology clinics of Tehran University of medical sciences. Results: The Persian version of DHI showed good face and content validity. The internal consistency of DHI-P was good, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.79, 0.82, 0.83, and 0.90 for total and emotional, physical and functional subscales; respectively, in reliability, There was a high correlation between test re-test scores (r = 0.90, P = 0.000). Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.96 for total score and 0.92, 0.92, and 0.96 for emotional, physical and functional subscales; respectively. Conclusion: Considering good psychometric properties, we suggest that DHI-P can use for evaluating the dizziness effects on quality of life in Persian population.