Development of the Life-Worldly Communication Scale to Improve Quality of Life: Daily Conversation as Care for Older Adults

ABSTRACT

The lack of daily conversation may lead to the deterioration of quality of life and cognitive function in older adults requiring long-term care. This study aimed to develop a scale to measure daily conversation among them, the Life-Worldly Communication Scale: LWCS, and to test its structural, convergent, and discriminant validity. The subjects were 539 older adults requiring long-term care in facilities and at home. A 24-item provisional scale was created, using a panel of experts. Structural validity of LWCS was examined from exploratory factor analysis to establish the factor structure, two confirmatory factor analyses for cross-validation, and measurement invariance between the institutional and home setting. Convergent validity was examined from the average variance extracted: AVE, composite reliability: CR, and simple regression analysis between LWCS and Interdependent Happiness Scale: IHS. Discriminant validity was examined using the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations: HTMT. Multiple imputations were used to deal with missing data on these scales. The results showed that the goodness of fit of the three-factor, 11-item model obtained from the two-step CFA was SRMR = .043, RMSEA = .059, CFI = .978, and AGFI = .905. The model was confirmed for structural validity by measurement invariance tests: configural invariance (CFI=.973, RMSEA = .047), metric invariance (ΔCFI= .001, ΔRMSEA=−.004), scalar invariance (ΔCFI =-0.002, RMSEA = −0.003). Convergent validity was confirmed by AVE = .503~.772, CR = .801~.910, and simple regression analysis between LWCS and IHS (adjusted r²=.18, p < .001). Discriminant validity was also confirmed among the three factors (HTMT=.496~.644). LWCS can contribute to the assessment of daily conversation in geriatric settings and research regarding its promotion.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the older adults and the staff of long-term care facilities, visiting nurses, and caregivers who were willing to complete our survey during a global pandemic.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Data and materials are not available as the authors have not completed their original work with the data set. The studies reported in the manuscript don’t were pre-registered.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2233180

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI [Grant Number JP17K12427] and the Mitsubishi Foundation [Grant Number 202130030].