The empty nest syndrome assessment instrument: development and psychometric properties of Persian version among iranian older adults

ABSTRACT

Leaving home by children so-called ‘empty nest’ is a crucial event that will affect the parents’ quality of life. This article reports the development and validation of the empty nest syndrome Instrument (ENSAI), an instrument that assessed a set of signs and symptoms specific to parents confronted by the empty nest. Initially, qualitative responses from 41 parents were analyzed and cross-referenced with existing literature on empty nest syndrome to develop 21 items and six factors of Loneliness, Purposelessness, Anxiety-Depression, Insomnia, Grief-Loss, and Incompetency. Following a development phase, the instrument’s psychometric properties were tested on a sample of 210 parents using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFI). EFA revealed six subscales for ENSAI, collectively explaining 79% of the empty nest syndrome variance. All item loadings were ‘good’ to ‘excellent,’ ranging from 0.60 to 0.96. CFA indicated a high goodness of fit for the Persian version of ENSAI.

Disclosure statement

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

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Shiraz University of Medical Sciences under [Grant 98-01-21-20039].