Objective: To translate the WHO’s quality of life questionnaire, WHOQOL-100, into Persian language and assess the validity and reliability of this translated version.

Materials & Methods: To translate the questionnaire, a forward-backward procedure is used. A pilot sample of 60 university students was recruited to assess the repeatability and concurrent validity of the instrument. Then, 500 healthy and 500 disabled individuals were randomly selected using a multi-stage sampling technique. The internal consistency of the Persian version of the WHOQOL-100 was evaluated using the Cronbach’s alpha in this sample. In addition, a multiple linear regression model was utilized for assessing the discriminant validity of this instrument adjusting for different confounders.

Results: The test-retest analysis of the data from the pilot sample showed that the Persian version of the WHOQOL-100 has acceptable repeatability (ICCs for all six domains were more than 0.7). Also, computing the correlation between domains of WHOQOL-100 and WHOQOL-BREF showed satisfactory concurrent validity. Analyzing the data from 500 healthy and 500 disabled persons revealed that all the domains of WHOQOL-100 met the minimum level of acceptable internal consistency. The multiple regression results showed acceptable discriminant validity for all domains of this version of the WHOQOL-100, expect for the spiritual domain.

Conclusion: In general the Persian version of the WHOQOL-100 had satisfactory reliability and validity for assessing the quality of life in Iranian people. However, further research is recommended for challenging the problem of the spiritual domain.

Objective: Schizophrenia is to be emphasized due to its high prevalence, severity of symptoms and frequent recurrences. In this study the hazard of recurrence of Schizophrenia was analyzed by using recurrent events models.

Materials & Methods: This study was an observational prospective study. Data was gathered from 159 registered schizophrenia patients at Razi Psychiatric Center. The type II conditional model and the frailty model were used for analyzing times of recurrence. SAS (version 9.1) and R (version 2.11.0) were used for analysis of data. Significance level for the statistical tests was considered to be 0.05.

Results: In the type II conditional model, age at onset of disease (P=0.021) and marital status (P<0.001) only significantly affected the hazard of the first relapse. The effects of age at onset of disease, sex, marital status, how the disease began, history of head trauma and family history of schizophrenia were not significant on the hazard of the second relapse. History of head trauma had significant effect only on the hazard of the third relapse (P=0.020). In the frailty model only the effects of sex (P=0.014) and history of head trauma (P=0.014) were significant on the hazard of recurrent relapses.

Conclusion: The effects of some covariates on the hazard of recurrent relapses were significant under type II conditional model, and some covariates had significant effect under the frailty model. Further research is needed to investigate the effect of other prognostic factors on the hazard of recurrent relapses and time of recurrent relapses.

Objective: The aim of this work was the translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the Persian version of the Rapid Office Stress Assessment (ROSA) checklist. Material & Methods: This methodological study was conducted according of IQOLA method. 100 office worker were selected in order to carry out a psychometric evaluation of the ROSA checklist by performing validity (face and convergent) analyses. The convergent validity was evaluated using RULA checklist. Results: Upon major changes made to the ROSA checklist during the translation/cultural adaptation process, face validity of the Persian version was obtained. Spearman correlation coefficient between total score of ROSA check list and RULA checklist was significant (r=0.76, p<0.0001). Conclusion: The results indicated that the translated version of the ROSA checklist is acceptable in terms of face validity, convergent validity in target society, and hence provides a useful instrument for assessing Iranian office workers