The health of Australian veterans of the 1991 Gulf War: factor analysis of self-reported symptoms

• Published in: Occupational and environmental medicine (London, England) Vol. 61; no. 12; pp. 1014 - 1020
• Main Authors: Forbes, A B, McKenzie, D P, Mackinnon, A J, Kelsall, H L, McFarlane, A C, Ikin, J F, Glass, D C, Sim, M R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 01.12.2004; BMJ Publishing Group; BMJ; BMJ Publishing Group LTD; BMJ Group
• Subjects: 12-item version of the Short-Form Health Survey; Adult; Australia - epidemiology; Biological & chemical weapons; Biological and medical sciences; CFI; comparative fit index; Correlation coefficients; Correlations; Factor analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Gulf War; Humans; Male; MCS-12; Medical sciences; Mental Component Summary scale of the SF-12; Military; Military personnel; Miscellaneous; Occupational Diseases - epidemiology; Occupational Diseases - etiology; Occupational Exposure - adverse effects; Occupational medicine; ordinal scales; Original; PCS-12; Pearson correlations; Persian Gulf syndrome; Persian Gulf Syndrome - epidemiology; Persian Gulf Syndrome - etiology; Persian Gulf War; Physical Component Summary scale of the SF-12; polychoric correlations; Prevalence; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; RMSEA; root mean squared error of approximation; Self reports; SF-12; SRMR; standardised root mean squared residual; Statistical variance; Studies; Symptoms; TLI; Tucker-Lewis Index; Uranium; Veterans; Veterans - psychology; War; Warfare; Australia; Oceania; Symptomatology; Factor analysis; Prevalence; Self evaluation; Frequency; Veteran; Comparative study; Public health; Military
• ISSN: 1351-0711; 1470-7926
• DOI: 10.1136/oem.2003.011791

Background: A recent report showed that Australian veterans of the 1991 Gulf War displayed a greater prevalence of a multitude of self-reported symptoms than a randomly sampled comparison group of military personnel who were eligible for deployment but were not deployed to the Gulf. Aims: To investigate whether the pattern, rather than frequency, of symptom reporting in these Australian Gulf War veterans differed from that of the comparison group personnel. Methods: Factor analysis was used to determine whether the co-occurrence of 62 symptoms in 1322 male Gulf War veterans can be explained by a number of underlying dimensions, called factors. The methodology was also applied to 1459 male comparison group subjects and the factor solutions of the two groups were compared. Results: For the Gulf War veterans, a three factor solution displayed replicability and construct validity. The three factors were labelled as psycho-physiological distress, somatic distress, and arthro-neuromuscular distress, and were broadly similar to those described in previous studies of Gulf War veterans. A concordant three factor solution was also found for the comparison group subjects, with strong convergence of the factor loadings and factor scores across the two groups being displayed. Conclusion: Results did not display evidence of a unique pattern of self-reported symptoms among Gulf War veterans. Results also indicated that the differences between the groups lie in the degrees of expression of the three underlying factors, consistent with the well documented evidence of increased self-reported symptom prevalence in Gulf War veterans.