Psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Falls Efficacy Scale-International for older adults with osteoporosis, self-reported balance deficits and fear of falling

摘要

Purpose: Investigate the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Falls Efficacy ScaleInternational (FES-I). Method: Cross-sectional study. Community-dwelling older adults with self-reported balance deficits and fear of falling were recruited from an ongoing randomised controlled study to evaluate the psychometric properties of the FES-I using Rasch model analysis. Results: The Rasch model analysis revealed good category function, the questionnaire measured one dimension with an explained variance of 68.6% and item goodness-of-fit with mean square values (MnSq) 0.7-1.44. The item map showed that all items are spread over the scale, which indicates different difficulties in the items. Non-satisfactory person goodness-of-fit was shown with seven persons and showed person misfit according to both the MnSq-value and the z-value, 38 persons (40%) showed a person misfit when only following the threshold for MnSq. Conclusions: The Swedish version of FES-I shows good psychometric properties with unidimensionality and item goodness-of-fit. Lower person goodness-of-fit was shown probably because of confounding factors that may influence the answers. The transformed values of the FES-I make it possible to use parametric statistics preferable for this population in future research