Introduction:

The Quality of Life Instrument of the World Health Organization is widely used in healthy and sick people; however, few Colombian studies have analyzed its dimensions in a healthy population.

Objective:

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the WHOQOL-BREF in a healthy population of Medellín and to estimate the reference intervals for it’s four dimensions.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study and psychometric evaluation in 1938 people. Reliability was evaluated with Cronbach's α, internal consistency and discriminant power with Spearman's Rho, content validity with λ coefficients and variance explained by means of an exploratory factor analysis with extraction by principal components. Aberrant values were eliminated using the Grubbs statistic, the global reference intervals were estimated for each dimension of the WHOQOL-BREF and the specific ones, according to demographic and socioeconomic variables, using 95% confidence intervals for the mean, and comparisons using Student's t and Anova. The analyzes were carried out in SPPS 27.0®.

Results:

Excellent reliability, internal consistency, discriminating power, and content validity were found in the four dimensions of the instrument in a healthy population. The reference values were 64.3-65.6 in physical health, 70.8-72.0 in psychological health, 64.3-65.9 in social health and 60.5-61.6 in environmental health, with statistically significant differences according to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics

Conclusion:

The excellent psychometric performance of the scale in the healthy population allowed the estimation of the reference intervals for the four dimensions, as well as the values for subgroups made up of demographic and socioeconomic variables, which is decisive for including the outcomes centered on people in medicine and public health programs, as well as suitable comparators for the sick population.

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