Because of the lack of suitable generic health status measures in Hong Kong that reflect the value structure and culture of the society, we have translated and calibrated the Sickness Impact Profile, which was originally developed in the United States. Translation consisted of a sequence of forward translations into Chinese, back translations into English and, when there was a loss of meaning or conceptual equivalence, retranslation into Chinese. Sixty Hong Kong Chinese people, including health professionals, patients, and members of the public were then recruited to determine item and dimension weights for the Hong Kong population. Individual ratings were averaged to obtain a consensus value for each item. Within-category reliability analysis for scores varied from 0.70 to 0.92 (Cronbach's alpha values) and overall internal consistency was 0.98. There were only small differences between this version and the original American English version in the ratings given to individual questions (Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient, r=0.8). We have developed a Chinese translation of the Sickness Impact Profile, which can now be used to evaluate health outcomes in Hong Kong and to compare outcomes with studies in other populations where the Sickness Impact Profile was used.