Reliability and validation of the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory

Abstract

　　The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), a questionnaire to determine the severity of distress from tinnitus, is also used for evaluation of the efficacy of treatment of tinnitus. We performed translation and back translation of the original English version of THI and analyzed the reliability and validity of the revised version of THI. In this study, 98 subjects, including patients with the subjective complaint of tinnitus and normal subjects without tinnitus were enrolled from 6 hospitals. We confirmed the reliability of the revised THI based on the high values of the Cronbach's α coefficient and the test-retest correlations. We also confirmed the validity of the revised THI based on the correlation of the results with those of the previous version of THI, HADS (a questionnaire of anxiety and depression) and SF-36 (QOL questionnaire). Based on the results, we concluded that the revised version of THI can be used as a valid and reliable questionnaire. However, the reproducibility of questions 13 and 16 could not be confirmed.