Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Self-care Ability Scale for the Elderly

To translate the Self-care Ability Scale for the Elderly into Simplified Chinese and to test the Chinese version of the scale regarding its reliability and validity among older people.

Self-care is an important topic in nursing. When assessing older people's self-care ability, it is essential that a reliable and valid instrument is used.

This study employed across-sectional design.

We translated the English version of the Self-care Ability Scale for the Elderly into Simplified Chinese according to Brislin's translation guidelines and carried out a questionnaire survey among 610 older people, including both community-dwelling people and hospital patients, in Jinzhou City, People's Republic of China. Eighty participants completed the instrument twice for test-retest reliability. Data analyses were performed using spss 17.0 and Mplus, version 5, to assess reliability and validity.

A Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .89 and statistically significant item-to-total correlations showed evidence of homogeneity. An intraclass correlation coefficient of .99 for the test-retest between total scores and intraclass correlation coefficients between .87-.99 for the test-retest scores of each item explained the almost perfect test-retest reliability noted in this study. Content validity was found to be good, and a three-factor model was obtained in an exploratory factor analysis (explaining a variance of 57%) and modified in a confirmatory factor analysis (χ²  = 261.559, df = 98, root mean square error of approximation = 0.074; standardised root mean square residual = 0.059), which reflected an acceptable construct validity.

This study shows that the Chinese version of the Self-care Ability Scale for the Elderly has sufficient psychometric properties for assessing self-care ability among older people in China.

A reliable and valid instrument is available to assess the self-care ability of older Chinese people.