Reliability and validity of the Clinical pHysical rEsilience assEssment Scale (CHEES) in community-dwelling older adults

Background

Physical resilience is closely related to healthy aging and refers to the ability of an individual to recover or maintain function after a stressor. However, tools for assessing physical resilience among community-dwelling older adults in China are lacking. We previously developed a 14-item Clinical pHysical rEsilience assEssment Scale (CHEES) in Chinese older adults.

Objective

To determine the reliability and validity of the CHEES among community-dwelling older adults.

Methods

A total of 1934 older adults from the Beijing community were included. The acceptability of the scale was evaluated by scale acceptance rate, scale qualification rate, and scale completion time. The reliability of the scale was evaluated from the aspects of internal consistency, split-half, and test-retest reliability. The validity of the scale was evaluated in terms of content, construct, and criterion validity.

Results

The average age of the 1934 older adults was 69.73 ± 5.95 years, of whom 1219 were female (63.03 %). The CHEES scale acceptance and qualification rate were both 100 %, and the scale completion time was 2–3 min. The Cronbach's alpha, Spearman–Brown, and Guttman's split-half coefficients for the total scale were 0.733, 0.508, and 0.507, respectively. The Cronbach's alpha, Spearman–Brown, and Guttman's split-half coefficients were 0.567, 0.252, and 0.195 for the intrinsic capacity dimension; 0.768, 0.826, and 0.759 for the adapt to change dimension; and 0.646, 0.554, and 0.554 for the external support dimension, respectively. In the test-retest reliability analysis, the intraclass correlation coefficient for the total scores of the two assessments was 0.915. Further exploratory factor analysis showed that the cumulative variance contribution rate of the common factor was 59.91 %, with factor loadings for each item ranging from 0.472 to 0.858. The Spearman correlation coefficient between CHEES and the Barthel index was 0.110.

Conclusions

The CHEES exhibits good reliability and validity; therefore, it can be used as a reliable tool for evaluating physical resilience of older adults in community settings.