Pilot study on the Chinese version of the Life Space Assessment among community-dwelling elderly

To translate the Life Space Assessment (LSA) into Chinese and to examine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the LSA (LSA-C) among community-dwelling elderly.

Data were collected from 100 community-dwelling elderly people (50 males and 50 females) aged over 65 years (72.23±5.05) in Shanghai. The criterion convergent validity was evaluated by bivariate Pearson correlation analysis separately between the LSA-C and physical health section of the Short Form 36 Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36-PH), Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADLs), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale (IADLs), and Mini Physical Performance Test (Mini-PPT). The construct validity was estimated using mental health section of the Short Form 36 Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36-MH), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). The test-retest reliability of the LSA-C was tested after two weeks by inter-class correlation method.

The test-retest reliability of the LSA-C was 0.76. The criterion convergent validity, which was evaluated by bivariate Pearson correlation analysis between the LSA-C and SF-36-PH, IADLs, and Mini-PPT, was 0.595 (P<0.001), 0.567 (P<0.001), and 0.433 (P<0.001), respectively. The construct validity, which was evaluated by the SF-36, GDS, and MMSE, was 0.704 (P<0.001), -0.544 (P<0.001), and 0.424 (P<0.001), respectively.

The LSA-C has acceptable reliability and validity and is significantly correlated with other health evaluation tools with respect to, e.g., health status, daily function, physical performance, presence of depression, and cognitive status. These results demonstrate that the LSA-C can be applied to health evaluations and interventions in community-dwelling elderly in China.