Abstract
Background: As ageing is a personal experience, an attitude to ageing questionnaire is essential for capturing the most realistic appraisal of this important life stage. Our aim was to study the psychometric properties of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire (AAQ) in a sample of Spanish older people.
Methods: Two hundred forty two participants aged 60 years and older were recruited from community centres, primary care centres, and family associations for the mentally ill and dementia. In addition to the AAQ, participants provided information on demographics, self-perception of health, comorbidity, health status (SF-12), depressive symptoms (GDS-30), and quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF and WHOQOL-OLD). Analysis was performed using standard psychometric techniques with SPSS v15.0.
Results: no floor and ceiling effects were found, and missing data was low. The internal consistency measured by Cronbach’s alpha for AAQ subscales were .59, .70 and .73. Exploratory Factor Analysis produced a three factors solution accounting for 34% of the variance. A priori expected associations were found between some AAQ subscales with WHOQOL-BREF domains, WHOQOL-OLD, SF-12 and the GDS-30, indicating good construct validity. In general, AAQ subscales differentiated between participants with lower and higher levels of education, and between a priori defined groups of older people (nondepressed vs. depressed; those with higher vs. lower physical comorbidities and non-carers vs. carers).
Conclusions: The Spanish version of the AAQ questionnaire showed acceptable
psychometric properties in a convenience sample of Spanish older people. It is a usefulmeasure of attitude for use with older people in social and clinical services.
Methods: Two hundred forty two participants aged 60 years and older were recruited from community centres, primary care centres, and family associations for the mentally ill and dementia. In addition to the AAQ, participants provided information on demographics, self-perception of health, comorbidity, health status (SF-12), depressive symptoms (GDS-30), and quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF and WHOQOL-OLD). Analysis was performed using standard psychometric techniques with SPSS v15.0.
Results: no floor and ceiling effects were found, and missing data was low. The internal consistency measured by Cronbach’s alpha for AAQ subscales were .59, .70 and .73. Exploratory Factor Analysis produced a three factors solution accounting for 34% of the variance. A priori expected associations were found between some AAQ subscales with WHOQOL-BREF domains, WHOQOL-OLD, SF-12 and the GDS-30, indicating good construct validity. In general, AAQ subscales differentiated between participants with lower and higher levels of education, and between a priori defined groups of older people (nondepressed vs. depressed; those with higher vs. lower physical comorbidities and non-carers vs. carers).
Conclusions: The Spanish version of the AAQ questionnaire showed acceptable
psychometric properties in a convenience sample of Spanish older people. It is a usefulmeasure of attitude for use with older people in social and clinical services.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 490-499 |
| Journal | International Psychogeriatrics |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 15 Nov 2012 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2013 |
Keywords
- Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire
- AAQ
- elderly
- Reliability
- validity