Psychological Well-Being among Saudi Adults During the Context of COVID-19 Lockdown: A Psychometric Analysis of the 12-Item General Health Questionnaire

Background: Most communities' mental health and perceptions of psychological well-being are known to be profoundly disrupted by large-scale pandemics. Despite the wide range of available screening measures, there are few reliable and valid screening measures for detecting psychological symptoms in non-clinical populations during a health emergency situation such as the COVID-19 outbreak. Objective: This study aims to conduct a psychometric analysis of Goldberg's 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) to validate its use among a sample of Saudi adults during the context of COVID-19 lockdown using reliability and factor analyses. Methods: : 473 individuals (aged 18 years and over) were recruited and taken from the general Saudi population living in Makkah province of Saudi Arabia to complete the virtual format of the Arabic GHQ-12 (Ar-GHQ-12). In addition to descriptive statistics and reliability analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the factorial structure of the Arabic GHQ-12. Results: : In line with previous works from several cultures, the Ar-GHQ-12 was found to have high reliability (α = .859) and considered the two-factor solution to be the best-fitting model because it fits the data better than the one-factor (unidimensional) model. Discussion: It was determined that the Ar-GHQ-12 is suitable for assessing the psychological well-being of the general non-psychiatric population in Saudi Arabia in emergency contexts and may be applied in Saudis and other Arabic-speaking populations in research and busy primary care settings.