Background Falls are a common and serious public health issue among older adults, contributing to the loss of independence, psychological distress, and incapability to engage in meaningful occupations, etc. However, there is a lack of abundant information about the fall risk self-evaluation scale for community-dwelling older people. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the preliminary reliability and validity of the fall risk self-assessment scale (FRSAS) among community-dwelling older adults. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 230 individuals aged 65 years and over were recruited by a convenience sampling between October and December 2020 from three communities in Haidian district, Beijing. Eligible participants were required to fill in the general condition questionnaire and the fall risk self-assessment scale. The reliability and validity were analyzed by using SPSS 20.0. Results Two hundred twenty-two participants completed the assessment as required (the completion rate was 96.52%). The most items of FRSAS were understood by older adults, which was completed in 10 min. Cronbach’s α and intraclass correlation coefficient ICC (2,1) of the scale were 0.757 and 0.967 respectively, suggesting good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Exploratory factor analysis yielded 14 factors that explained 61.744% of the variance. Five items failed to be categorized into any factors because the factor loading of these items was less than 0.4. A future large-sample study needs to be conducted to explore its construct validity. The total scores and dimensional scores except for C-dimension showed significant differences between participants who had experienced a fall in the previous 6 months and those who had not (P < 0.05), indicating good discriminant validity. Conclusions The fall risk self-assessment scale including 41 items demonstrated relatively high feasibility as well as satisfactory results in the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminant validity. Trial registration Registration number: ChiCTR2000038856; Date of registration: 7 Oct 2020.

Background: Fall is a common accidental injury of the older people, which seriously threatens their physical and mental health. The occurrence of fall often due to the interaction of multiple risk factors. The Fall Risk Self-Assessment Scale (FRSAS) is a multi-dimensional fall risk assessment tool. Pre-experiments have shown that the first version of FRSAS can be used for assessing the fall risks of the older people in communities, with strong operability and good reliability and validity. This study aims at further optimizing the items of the Scale through large sample survey, and assessing the reliability and validity of the revised FRSAS. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study, using the convenient sampling method. A total of 500 older adults aged 65 and above were recruited from four health service centers in Beijing from October 2021 to March 2022. Among whom, 489 subjects completed FRSAS as required, and the effective response rate of the Questionnaire was 97.8%; 44 subjects completed the repeated survey with the repeated measurement rate of 8.8%. The items of FRSAS were analyzed and screened to form the final version of the Scale with the comprehensive screening method, and the reliability and validity of the final version of the Scale were tested. Results: The items of the Scale were compared and analyzed with the comprehensive screening method, of which, six items, namely D1, P12, C3, C9, C10 and H11, with two or more screening methods prompt to be deleted. After discussion by the experts, they agreed to delete the above 6 items and adjust the structure of the final FRSAS to 35 items and 4 dimensions. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the final FRSAS was 0.783 and the test-retest reliability was 0.98. Taking whether the subjects had a history of fall in the past year as the grouping variable, the total score of the Scale was tested by T test, and the difference between both groups was statistically significant (P =0.000). Conclusion: The revision of the final version of FRSAS meets the actual needs of the older people in communities, with simple items and better reliability and validity. FRSAS can be used as an important reference tool for assessing the risks of fall in the older people in communities. Trial registration: Registration number: ChiCTR2000038856; Date of registration:7 Oct 2020.