Cross-cultural adaptation, reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the modified Gait Efficacy Scale in community-dwelling older adults

ABSTRACT

Background

There are no published studies on the cross-cultural adaptation of the modified Gait Efficacy Scale (mGES) to Turkish and investigated its reliability and validity.

Purpose

The aim of the study was to cross-culturally adapt the mGES to Turkish (T-mGES) and to prove its psychometric properties in community-dwelling older adults.

Methods

International translation strategies and cultural adaptation procedures were used. A total of 103 community-dwelling older adults (73 women, 30 men) have participated in psychometric property analysis. Participants were assessed using the T-mGES, Activity Specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) and the Falls Efficacy Scale–International (FES-I). T-mGES was recompleted one week later.

Results

The mean age of the individuals was 67.8 ± 4.8 years. The T-mGES had strong test-retest reliability (ICC: 0.835, CI 95%: 0.72–0.90). The T-mGES’ overall score had strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α: 0.961). The SEM₉₅ and MDC₉₅ values for the total score were 6.62 and 18.34, respectively. T-mGES had a strong relationship with ABC and FES-I (r₁: 0.899, r₂: −0.707, p < .01), indicating a high (r > 0.50) construct validity. On the other hand, factor analysis results proved a one-dimensioned structure of the T-mGES.

Conclusion

T-mGES is a reliable and valid questionnaire for assessing gait efficacy in Turkish speaking community-dwelling older adults. T-mGES provides a straightforward measure due to its unidimensional form.

KEYWORDS:

• Gait
• psychometrics
• reliability
• Turkish version
• validity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.