Abstract
The correlations between the integrated Hβ luminosities, the velocity widths of the nebular lines and the metallicities of giant H II regions and H II galaxies are demonstrated to provide powerful distance indicators. They are calibrated on a homogeneous sample of giant H II regions with well determined distances and applied to distant H II galaxies to obtain a value of H0 = 95±10 for the Hubble parameter, consistent with the value obtained by the Tully-Fisher technique. The effect of Malmquist bias and other systematic effects on the H II region method are discussed in detail.
