The Development, Validity and Reliability of the Willingness of Prosocial Behavior Scale for Community-Dwelling Older...

Prosocial behavior, as an important social activity, plays a significant role in promoting the physical and mental health of older people. However, the existing measurement tools for prosocial behavior have primarily been developed for and applied to younger populations. There are no specific tools available to fully capture the nuances of prosocial behavior in older adults. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the Willingness of Prosocial Behavior Scale for community-dwelling older adults and to evaluate its psychometric properties.

Qualitative research, a two-round modified Delphi method, and cognitive interviews were utilized to build the scale items in stage 1, and the reliability and validity were tested using Classical Test Theory in stage 2. Community- dwelling older adults aged ≥ 60 years were selected to participate in interviews or face-to-face surveys.

The final scale included 14 items with four subdimensions: collectivity, relationship, tendency and altruism. The structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed a good model fit: χ²/ DF = 1.642, GFI = 0.939, NFI = 0.902, IFI= 0.959, TLI= 0.947, CFI = 0.959, and RMSEA = 0.051. The overall Cronbach's α, split-half reliability, and ICC were 0.866, 0.803, and 0.954, respectively.

The Willingness of Prosocial Behavior Scale exhibited good reliability and validity, and its development took into full account the collectivist cultural context, prosocial behavioral characteristics, and cognitive abilities of older adults. Future studies should focus on its application and additional testing by large-scale research with diversity types of older people.