The domestic elder abuse in China: Scale development and psychometric properties

Abstract

An effective screening tool is essential to elder abuse research. Although several instruments have been developed in China to measure elder abuse, they present several limitations. The instrument development involved three components: (1) generating questionnaire items; (2) questionnaire testing and data collection in older adults; and (3) psychometric evaluation of the Domestic Elder Abuse Scale (DEAS). We collected questionnaire responses from 3725 community-dwelling Chinese older adults. The 26-item DEAS showed good reliability and validity across five dimensions: physical abuse, psychological abuse, financial exploitation, neglect, and abandonment. These five factors accounted for 78.432 % of the total variance, and model fitting results were acceptable. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.975, and the test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.934 after 2 weeks. This study developed a five-dimension instrument to measure elder abuse, with good psychometric properties, which can play an essential role in community-based studies in China.