A brief version of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire for older Chinese adults: development and psychometric evaluation

Abstract

Background Positive attitudes toward aging are considered essential for achieving psychological well-being in later life. However, there is currently a lack of a concise and comprehensive measurement tool specifically designed to assess attitudes toward aging among the elderly population in China. To address this gap, the present study aimed to develop a brief version of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire tailored to older Chinese individuals and evaluate its psychometric properties. Methods Initially, a sample of community-dwelling older adults (Sample 1: n = 442, aged 60–88) was utilized to establish a new scale format. Subsequently, two convenience samples (Sample 2: n = 311, aged 60–90; Sample 3: n = 164, aged 60–89) were employed to evaluate the psychometric properties of this scale, including factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Results We selected 12 items from the original questionnaire to create the brief scale. The brief scale maintained the three-factor structure of the full-format version, encompassing psychosocial loss, physical change, and psychological growth, and demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. Conclusions This development process shortens the administration time of the questionnaire while avoiding excessive loss of information. The newly developed scale serves as a reliable and valid assessment tool for measuring attitudes toward aging among older Chinese individuals and is well-suited for implementation in large-scale surveys that utilize an extensive array of questionnaires. This tool can be applied to assessing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at eliminating ageism.