Abstract
BackgroundFear of falling is highly prevalent in older adults and associated with numerous negative health events. The main objective of this study was to validate a scale to assess fear of falling, based on performance in real situation (Perform-FES), in a hospitalized geriatric population.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, 55 patients (mean age: 85.3 years; 58% women) hospitalized in a geriatric hospital in Geneva (Switzerland) were enrolled. The Perform-FES scale was administered to all patients in conjunction with four other fear of falling scales. We determined the floor and ceiling effects, internal consistency, reliability, construct validity, and discriminative power of the Perform-FES scale.ResultsThe Perform-FES scale did not demonstrate any significant floor or ceiling effect. It had a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.78) and an excellent reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.94). Regarding convergent validity, good correlations were shown between the score obtained on the Perform-FES scale and those obtained on other fear of falling scales. Also, the Perform-FES scale was able to discriminate patients with severe functional impairments (area under the ROC curve = 0.81) and had significantly better discriminating performance than other fear of falling scales.ConclusionFindings suggest that the Perform-FES scale has good psychometric properties and may be a relevant tool to assess fear of falling in a geriatric hospitalized population. Future research should focus in particular on assessing the sensitivity to change and the predictive value of this scale in longitudinal studies, and its validity in other populations.
Highlights
Falls in older people are a common, serious, and growing public health problem
In view of the limitations discussed above, the objective of this study was to validate a fear of falling scale dedicated to the inpatient geriatric population, based on performance in real situation: the Perform-FES scale
This prospective cross-sectional observational study was conducted in the context of a single-center pilot randomized controlled pilot trial (Hypnosis and Fear of Falling in Seniors: the HYPNOSE trial), carried out in a 296-bed acute care and rehabilitation geriatric hospital of the University Hospitals of Geneva (Switzerland) between January and October 2019
Summary
Falls in older people are a common, serious, and growing public health problem. The consequences of this geriatric syndrome can be multiple with an impact on the physical, mental and social well-being of older adults [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The main objective of this study was to validate a scale to assess fear of falling, based on performance in real situation (Perform-FES), in a hospitalized geriatric population. Results The Perform-FES scale did not demonstrate any significant floor or ceiling effect It had a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.78) and an excellent reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.94). Good correlations were shown between the score obtained on the Perform-FES scale and those obtained on other fear of falling scales. Conclusion Findings suggest that the Perform-FES scale has good psychometric properties and may be a relevant tool to assess fear of falling in a geriatric hospitalized population. Future research should focus in particular on assessing the sensitivity to change and the predictive value of this scale in longitudinal studies, and its validity in other populations
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