Abstract:
Background: The fall risk assessment scale is a comprehensive, proficient assessment scale and frequently used to identify the older adult`s fall risk level. This can assist in the early identification of risky individuals, the development of prevention mechanisms and reduce the chance of injury. It would also enable in the generation of evidence to find out if a person have a low or high risk of fall. However, no previous studies have been done in the study area to develop a contextualized and valid fall risk measurement tool.
Objective: To cross-culturally translate, adapt and to evaluate the validity and reliability of fall risk assessment scale among older adults in Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia 2023.
Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was done with 340 older adults selected by systematic random sampling technique with the assumption of 20:1individuals to item ratio from March to June 2023. Both forward and backward translation of the scale was done and lastly a prefinal Amharic version of the scale was produced based on consensus between experts. Face validation was done with the pre-final scale by 15 participants. Item level content validity index (ICVI), scale level content validity based on average and universal agreement (S-CVI/Av & SCVI/UA), content validity ratio (CVR) and kappa statistic coefficient were used for the content validation. The data was collected by face to face interview. Epi-info 7 and SPSS version 25 were used for data entering and for analysis respectively. Principal component analysis method; kaiserimayer-olkin (KMO), bartlet`s test and factor loading were used as pre-requisite for factor analysis. Chrobach`s α and composite reliability (CR) were used to assess the reliability. Construct validity was examined by average variance extracted (AVE), factor loading and composite reliability.
Result: The I-CVI was above 0.86, S-CVI/Ave was 0.96 and S-CVI/UA was 0.71, CVR was > 0.85 and Kappa statistic coefficient was above 0.71. The KMO was 0.705 that reveals adequate sampling. Bartlet`s test was p<0.005which is significant. The principal component analysis with orthogonal rotation yields four domains which explain 50.491% of the total variance. The chrobach`s α was 0.56 and CR was ranged from 0.72-0.78 which suggests that the scale is reliable. The AVE, factor loading and CR of all factors was > 0.5 which shows that convergent validity was evidenced. The square root of AVEs was greater than factor correlation value that reveals that discriminant validity was met.
Conclusion: This study support that the Amharic version of fall risk assessment scale is content valid and Psychometrically it is valid and it has good reliability to assess older adult`s fall risk level.
