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Objectives: Within the context of Health-Related Quality of Life studies, it was necessary to translate and evaluate the psychometric properties of the SF-12 Health Survey version 2. The aim of this study was to investigate the factorial structure, convergent validity and reliability of this instrument in a healthy Iranian sample, following translation and establishment of content and face validity.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study the translated instrument was administered together with the Sense of Coherence Scale and Health Index in a convenience sample of healthy people (n=289) aged 18 to 76 years old between June and September 2006. A test-retest was conducted one month later.

Results: Content Validity Index for Scale (85.6%) and face validity of the instrument were acceptable. The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling by four models verified the existing two-factor structure, a physical and a mental component summary. All models exceeded the goodness of fit indices and showed a resemblance with the original instrument, except for models 3 and 4 (allowing cross-loadings). Although in these two models the General Health item and scale was loaded to the mental component rather than the physical component, construct validity of the instrument was confirmed. Also, physical and mental component summaries were significantly (P<0.001) correlated to the Sense of Coherence Scale (r=0.27, r=0.68) and Health Index (r=0.49, r=0.67). Cronbach’s alpha values and the intra-class correlation coefficients were ≥0.70 and ≥0.60, respectively.

Discussion: The Iranian SF-12 Health Survey version 2 was a psychometrically sound instrument, implying that it is suitable for use with large-scale surveys in Iranian population, both in clinical and rehabilitation settings or at a public level.

Objectives: Quality of life, when referring to an individual’s health, is called health-related quality of life. The purpose of this study is to assess self-perceived hearing loss related quality of life of adolescents with hearing loss and its relationship with sex, age sub-groups or school settings with domains of quality of life.

Methods: A school based survey was conducted in Tehran city. Using stratified sampling, 255 7^th to 12th grade students with hearing loss, aged 11-19 years, studying in main streaming and special school sitting, were participated in the study by completing the health-related quality of life adolescent’s questionnaire. Physical, Emotional and Social health-related quality of life domain scores as well as Total health-related quality of life scores was calculated in a 0-100 scoring system.

Results: As a whole, health-related quality of life of adolescents calculated to be 64.7±16.5. Students with milder hearing loss reported their quality of life (physical, emotional and social domains, as well as total quality of life) better than those with more severe hearing loss. Girls reported their physical and total health-related quality of life better than boys, and adolescents who were studied in mainstreaming reported better physical, social and total health-related quality of life. No significant differences were seen between reported health-related quality of life in early, mid or late adolescent age sub-groups. Nevertheless the power of tests was not enough to exclude differences between groups.

Discussion: Findings of this study could be readily used to focus interventions on domains with more weakness in each group of adolescents. Beyond that the results could be helpful as a base line for detecting effectiveness of interventions in future.