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We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 1669 prospective Vietnamese migrants who had applied to migrate to Australia to describe the association between self-reported health status and several commonly used clinical indicators of health among prospective Vietnamese migrants. Participants were recruited from the International Organization for Migration's standardised medical screening program.' We found that clinical indicators of health are related to self-reported health status among prospective Vietnamese migrants. Self-reported health status, which was assessed using a modified version of the Short Form-36 health survey, was significantly associated with clinical indicators of health, including the number of body system abnormalities identified during medical screening, evidence of tuberculosis on chest radiograph, and self-reported weight loss over the previous six months. These findings support the validity of self-reported health status assessment among prospective migrants, although the assessment of subjective indicators of health during compulsory medical screening may be limited by reporting bias.

We aimed to test the psychometric properties of a culturally relevant translation of the medical outcomes study short form-36 health survey (SF-36) with prospective Vietnamese migrants. The translated survey was interviewer-administered to 1610 Vietnamese aged over 15 years who had applied to migrate to Australia. All but two SF-36 items had good discriminant validity, and all eight scales of the Vietnamese version of the SFS-36 had good discriminant validity, which supports the use of SF-36 constructs to assess self-reported health status among Vietnamese migrants. However, the mental health, vitality and bodily pain scales demonstrated low internal consistency. This finding is likely to be a product of the increased diversity among scale items following modifications to improve cultural relevance. Further modifications to improve the internal consistency of these scales are required.

The purpose of this investigation was to modify an existing aging anxiety scale to produce an instrument specifically designed to assess aging anxiety in an elderly population. Existing instruments fail to consistently orientate aging associated threats into the future, and this poses a significant problem for the measurement of aging anxiety in the elderly population. It is proposed that this factor has confounded reports of the relationship between aging anxiety and advancing age. An existing valid and reliable instrument, the Anxiety about Aging Scale was modified for use with elderly respondents and tested on 123 independent community dwelling elderly individuals. The results indicated the modified scale provides a valid assessment of aging anxiety in the elderly.