Cross-cultural adjustment of successful aging scale and its reliability and validity in urban elderly

Objective To revised the Taiwan version successful aging inventory (SAI), and verify its reliability and validity in urban elderly in mainland China. Methods SAI was adjusted by culture and revised by pre-test to form a formal questionnaire. A sample of 600 elderly people in Guangzhou was chosen for a face-to-face questionnaire survey through convenient sampling. Half of the sample (n=300) was randomly selected for exploratory factor analysis, and the other was used to confirm the structural validity of SAI. Results Exploratory factor analysis extracted six common factors, including health autonomy, economic security, life adaptation, society and relative relationship, study and family. The cumulative contribution rate of six common factors was 65.366%. The fitting indexes of confirmatory factor analysis were χ2/df=1.861, CFI=0.930, IFI=0.930, TLI=0.923, GFI=0.823, RMSEA=0.054, RMR=0.073. There were significant ceiling effects in the four dimensions of health autonomy, economic security, life adaptation, and family. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's α) of SAI was 0.930, and the test-retest reliability was 0.943. An average score of SAI ≥ 3.95 points was considered successful aging. Conclusion Reliability and validity of SAI are good, which can be used to measure the successful aging status of Chinese elders and track the effectiveness of health promotion measures. Key words: Successful aging; The elderly; Reliability; Validity