Translation, Adaptation, and Psychometric Testing of the Almere Technology Acceptance Questionnaire (ATAQ) Among Older Adults in China

Abstract

Background

Lack of information on technology Acceptance of Social Assistant robots (SARs) limits the application of robots in the elderly care sector. Currently, no study has not reported a robot acceptance assessment tool in China.

Purpose

The current study aimed to translate the Almere Technology Acceptance Questionnaire (ATAQ) from English to Mandarin Chinese, perform cross-cultural adaptations, and to evaluate its psychometric properties among elderly people in China.

Methods

This study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 comprised the context relevance evaluation, instrument translation, and cultural adaption from English to Mandarin Chinese. Phase 2 involved a quantitative cross-sectional survey of psychometric testing among 317 elderly Chinese, including reliability and evaluation of construct validity.

Results

In Phase 1, the Context Relevance Index of all items was rated “3 = relevant” or “4 = totally relevant”, and the Translation Validity Index of the 100% items of the ATAQ was rated 3 or 4. The ATAQ-Chinese questionnaire comprised 30 items. In Phase 2, all items of the ATAQ-Chinese questionnaire had a CR above 3 (P<0.001). Correlation coefficients of entries in the current study ranged from 0.403 to 0.763 (P<0.001). Nine factors were extracted through Exploratory Factor Analysis, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 77.175%. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that the model had a good fit (χ²/df=2.006, RMSEA=0.069, RMR=0.059, GFI=0.816, IFI=0.913, TLI=0.896, CFI=0.912). The content validity index was 0.92 indicating that all questions were relevant. The value of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showed high validity (α= 0.945, 0.664–0.891). The test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.980, indicating that the tool was reliable.

Conclusion

The Chinese version of ATAQ has good reliability and validity, and it is an acceptable, reliable, and valid tool for determining technology acceptance of Social assistant robots in older adults.

Keywords:

• Almere model
• psychometric property
• social assistant robots
• technology acceptance

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

The experimental protocol was approved by Human Ethics Committee of Hunan Normal University (2021-237). All research methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. Written informed consent was obtained from individual participants or guardians of the participants.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participants in this study. My appreciation also goes to Professor Marcel Heerink for granting the permission to translate and use the original version of the ATAQ.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund, Study on the acceptability and influencing factors of social robot for the aged (No:19CSH075).