Validating a brief aging perception questionnaire (B-APQ) for older persons with chronic disease in Taiwan

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to validate the Chinese version of the Brief Aging Perception Questionnaire (B-APQ) for older persons with chronic disease living in Taiwan. Methods: This study recruited older patients with chronic diseases from outpatient departments of a medical center in southern Taiwan. Five steps were used to develop the Chinese version of the B-APQ, including assessment of item quality, testing of the original model by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), establishing the new model by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA, testing the correlation between the new model and criterion instrument, and evaluating the reliability. Results: A total of 415 participants completed the survey. The structure of the original version was not suitable for the Taiwanese elderly. We developed a Chinese version of the B-APQ from outpatient dimensions and one additional item that accounted for cultural differences (for a total of 18 items). The indicators of construct validity were Chi-square (387.79), GFI (0.91), AGFI (0.88), RMSEA (0.07), and SRMR (0.054). For the convergent validity, the correlation coefficient was −0.07–0.39 for the Physical Activity Scale and -0.07–0.71 for the scale of the World Health Organization Quality of Life. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.86–0.91. Conclusions: The Chinese version of the B-APQ has good validity and reliability and is suitable for the measurement of the aging perceptions of older persons with chronic diseases in Taiwan.