International Literature Review on WHODAS II (World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II)

This review is a critical analysis regarding the study and utilization of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS II) as a basis for establishing specific criteria for evaluating relevant international scientific literature.The WHODAS II is an instrument developed by the World Health Organisation in order to assess behavioural limitations and restrictions related to an individual’s participation, independent from a medical diagnosis. This instrument was developed by the WHO’s Assessment, Classification and Epidemiology Group within the framework of the WHO/NIH Joint Project on Assessment and Classification of Disablements. To ascertain the international dissemination level of for WHODAS II’s utilization and, at the same time, analyse the studies regarding the psychometric validation of the WHODAS II translation and adaptation in other languages and geographical contests. Particularly, our goal is to highlight which psychometric features have been investigated, focusing on the factorial structure, the reliability, and the validity of this instrument. International literature was researched through the main data bases of indexed scientific production: the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts – CSA, PubMed, and Google Scholar, from 1990 through to December 2008.The following search terms were used:“whodas”, in the field query, plus “title” and “abstract”. The WHODAS II has been used in 54 studies, of which 51 articles are published in international journals, 2 conference abstracts, and one dissertation abstract. Nevertheless, only 7 articles are published in journals and conference proceedings regarding disability and rehabilitation. Others have been published in medical and psychiatric journals, with the aim of indentifying comorbidity correlations in clinical diagnosis concerning patients with mental illness. Just 8 out of 51 articles have studied the psychometric properties of the WHODAS II. The instruments have been translated into 11 languages and administered to a total of 88,844 subjects. Finally, the WHODAS II is prevalently used in the medical field, with major emphasis in the specialities of psychiatry, general medicine, and rehabilitation. All studies point out that WHODAS II as an effective and reliable instrument in order to assess the disability, individual functioning and participation levels. Furthermore, they often suggest administering the WHODAS II along with quality of life measures. Finally, the studies about the psychometric properties of the instrument agree in considering the WHODAS II a reliable and valid tool for disability assessment.