ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to translate, adapt and validate the Kessler 10-item questionnaire (K10) for measuring psychological distress in rural Bangladesh.DesignCohort study.SettingNarail district, Bangladesh.ParticipantsA random sample of 2425 adults of age 18–90 years was recruited.Outcome measureValidation of the K10 was the major outcome. Sociodemographic factors were measured to assess if the K10 needed adjustment for factors such as age or gender. The Rasch measurement model was used for the validation, and RUMM 2030 and SPSS V.24 software were used for analyses.ResultsInitial inspection of the total sample showed poor overall fit. A sample size of 300, which is more satiated for Rasch analysis, also showed poor overall fit, as indicated by a significant item–trait interaction (χ2= 262.27, df=40, p<0.001) and item fit residual values (mean=–0.25, SD=2.49). Of 10 items, five items were disordered thresholds, and seven items showed misfit, suggesting problems with the response format and items. After removing three items (‘feel tired’, ‘depressed’ and ‘worthless’) and changing the Likert scale categories from five to four categories, the remaining seven items showed ordered threshold. A revised seven-item scale has shown adequate internal consistency, with no evidence of multidimensionality, no differential item functioning on age and gender, and no signs of local dependency.ConclusionsAnalysis of the psychometric validity of K10 using the Rasch model showed that 10 items are not appropriate for measuring psychological distress in rural Bangladesh. A modified version of seven items (K7) with four response categories would provide a psychometrically more robust scale than the original K10. The study findings suggest repeating the K7 version in other remote areas for further validation can substantiate an efficient screening tool for measuring psychological distress among the general Bangladeshi population.

Background To assess the level of awareness, knowledge and help-seeking attitudes and behaviours in relation to mental health conditions (MHCs) and associations with socio-demographic characteristics of a rural district of Bangladesh. Methods We recruited 2425 adult samples (18–90 years) from a Cross-sectional study in Narial district of Bangladesh. Data on awareness, knowledge, help-seeking attitudes and practice in relation to six MHCs were collected. The MHCs were classified as common (depression, anxiety and drug addiction), and severe (psychosis, dementia and bipolar disorder). Associations of MHCs with socio-demographic characteristics were assessed using Chi-square tests. Rasch analysis was performed to transform the latent attribute (awareness) of MHCs from ordinal to interval scale. Multiple regression analysis was performed to determine how the socio-demographic characteristics contribute to the combined awareness score of MHCs. Results Of 2425 participants, 17 (0.7%) were cognizant of all the awareness construct of MHCs, and 1365 (56.28%) were not aware of any of MHCs. The prevalence of awareness of MHCs such as depression (8.5%), anxiety (6.2%), psychosis (3.5%), and bipolar disorder (3.3%), was found to be very low. Awareness was significantly lower in older adults, and in women. Higher levels of education (β 1.77, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.58–1.97) associated with common MHCs and (β 0.81, 95% CI: 0.67–0.95) those associated with severe MHCs contributed significantly to increased awareness as opposed to having no or primary level of education. Availability of sufficient funds when applied to common MHCs (β 0.43, 95% CI: 0.26–0.61) and severe MHCs (β 0.25, 95% CI: 0.13–0.38) appeared to be more effective in boosting awareness compared to unstable financial situations. Almost 100% of the participants who were aware of the MHCs demonstrated positive attitudes towards seeking medical or psychological counselling. Conclusions Awareness of MHCs appeared to be very limited. However, knowledgeable participants were found to be very receptive to medical or psychological counselling. For improving awareness of MHCs need to conduct various intervention programs in particular those campaigns that focus on women, older adults, low SES and people up to the primary levels of education. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4385-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background This study aimed to validate the psychometric properties of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument, Short Form (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire for use in a rural district of Bangladesh. Methods This cross-sectional study recruited a multi-stage cluster random sample of 2425 participants from the rural district Narail of Bangladesh in May–July 2017. Rasch analysis was carried out using the sampled participants, as well as multiple validation random sub-samples of 300 participants, to validate four domains of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire: physical, psychological, social and environmental. Results The original WHOQOL-BREF appeared to be a poor fit for both sampled and sub-sampled group of participants in Narail district in all underlying domains: physical, psychological, social and environmental. Two items ( sleep and work capacity ) from the physical domain, two items ( personal belief and negative feelings ) from the psychological domain and three items ( home environment , health care and transport ) from the environment domain were excluded for goodness of fit of the Rasch model. The social domain exhibited reasonably reliable fitness while fulfilling all the assumptions of the Rasch model. A modified version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire using five-items for the physical ( = 36.47, p = 0.013, Person Separation Index (PSI) = 0.773), four-items for the psychological ( = 28.30, p = 0.029, PSI = 0.708) and five-items for the environmental ( = 36.97, p = 0.011, PSI = 0.804) domain was applied, which showed adequate internal consistency, reliability, unidimensionality, and similar functioning for different age-sex distributions. Conclusions The modified WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire translated into Bengali language appeared to be a valid tool for measuring quality of life in a typical rural district in Bangladesh. Despite some limitations of the modified WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire, further application of Rasch analysis using this version or an improved one in other representative rural areas of Bangladesh is recommended to assess the external validity of the outcomes of this study and to determine the efficacy of this tool to measure the quality of life at the national rural level. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4026-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Managing the video content for searching and summarizing has become a challenging task. Extracting semantics from video scenes enables information to be presented in a more understandable manner. Finding the semantics between video contexts is a difficult task; much recent research has focused on this issue. Most videos, such as TV serials and commercial movies, are character-centric. Therefore, the context and relationship between characters needs to be organized systematically to analyze the video. So, it is necessary to identifY the contextual relationships between characters in the scene and the video. We propose Character-Net, a network structure. It finds characters in a group of shots, extracts the speaker and listeners in the scene, represents it with characterbased graphs and draws the relationship between all characters by accumulating the character-based graphs at video. In this paper, we describe how to build Character-Net. Experimental results show Character-Net is an effective methodology to extract the major characters in videos.978-0-7695-3801-3/09 $26.00 AbstractManaging the video content for searching and summarizing has become a challenging task. Extracting semantics from video scenes enables information to be presented in a more understandable manner. Finding the semantics between video contexts is a difficult task; much recent research has focused on this issue. Most videos, such as TV serials and commercial movies, are character-centric. Therefore, the context and relationship between characters needs to be organized systematically to analyze the video. So, it is necessary to identifY the contextual relationships between characters in the scene and the video. We propose Character-Net, a network structure. It finds characters in a group of shots, extracts the speaker and listeners in the scene, represents it with characterbased graphs and draws the relationship between all characters by accumulating the character-based graphs at video. In this paper, we describe how to build Character-Net. Experimental results show Character-Net is an effective methodology to extract the major characters in videos.978-0-7695-3801-3/09 $26.00

IntroductionA significant proportion of the global burden of disease has been attributed to mental and behavioural disorders. People with mental disorders (MDs) have lower levels of health-related quality of life than those without MDs. Several studies have shown that in low-resource countries, a range of social determinants including poor health literacy is critical in the epidemiological transition of disease outcome. There is a lack of evidence of MDs literacy, the prevalence and risk factors of common mental health conditions, or any validated instruments to measure psychological distress or evaluate the quality of life in rural areas of Bangladesh.AimsThe aims of this study are: (1) report the awareness, knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) of MDs; (2) estimate the prevalence of and risk factors for psychological distress; (3) measure association of psychological distress and other socio-demographic factors with quality of life and (4) test the feasibility to use Kessler 10-item (K10) and WHO Quality Of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaires in rural Bangladesh for measuring psychological distress and quality of life.Methods and analysisA sample of 1500 adults aged 18–59 years and 1200 older adults aged 60–90 years will be interviewed from a multistage cluster random sample. Each participant will go through a face-to-face interview to assess their awareness and KAP of MDs. Information about the participant’s sociodemographic and socioeconomic status will be collected along with the psychological distress (K10) and quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaires. Internal consistency, validity, reliability and item discrimination of K10 and WHOQOL-BREF instruments will be determined by using Rasch analysis and regression techniques.Ethics and disseminationHuman Ethics Approval was received from the Swinburne University of Technology Human Ethics Committee. Results of this research will be disseminated via scientific forums including peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences.