The Apraissal of Self-care Agency Scale and its relation to health behaviors and conditions in older adults

Abstract

The objective of this work was to contribute to the study of the validity of the “Appraisal of Self-care Agency Scale” (ASA scale) in older adults and to analyze its association with health-related behaviors and conditions. A questionnaire was constructed and applied to 165 elderly residents of Michoacán, Mexico. A confirmatory factor analysis of the scale's one-dimensional model was carried out, and also an analysis of internal consistency, as well as an analysis of the relationship with other variables based on group comparisons, exploring the effect of the elimination of inverse items. Overall, the reduced scale performed better although the one-dimensional model maintained a limited fit in the confirmatory factor analysis. Internal consistency was satisfactory in both scales (α coefficient= .806 and .826, respectively). In addition, some important group comparisons were identified with anthropometric measurements. In conclusion, tests were found supporting the validity of the ASA scale in older adults, although more evidence is still needed regarding its construct and criterion validity.