Citation

Kempen GIJM, Rixt Zijlstra GA, van Haastregt JC. Tijdschr. Gerontol. Geriatr. 2007; 38(4): 204-212.

Vernacular Title

Het meten van angst om te vallen met de Falls Efficacy Scale-International

Affiliation

Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Universiteit Maastricht. g.kempen@zw.unimaas.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Van Loghum Slaterus for the Nederlandse Vereniging Voor Gerontologie and the Nederlands Instituut Voor Gerontologie)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

17879824

Abstract

Fear of falling is common in older persons. Different methods have been developed to assess fear of falling. The most well-know measure is the 10-item Falls Efficacy Scale (FES). However, the FES items (a) focus on low functioning older persons and particularly on in-home activities, (b) do not comprise social activities, and (c) were developed from a US perspective so that translation in European languages is hampered. To solve these issues, the 16-item Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I) was recently developed within the Prevention of Falls Network Europe (ProFaNE). In this article, the Dutch version of the FES-I is presented and the psychometric properties in 213 Dutch persons aged 70 years of age and over are described. The FES-I showed to be unidimensional and internally consistent; the Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0.96. The 4 week test-retest intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.82. The associations of the FES-I sumscores with age, gender, falls history and overall fear of falling was as expected, indicating construct validity. In addition, the FES-I discriminated in the same extent as the original 10-item FES scale. We conclude that the FES-I showed acceptable reliability and construct validity and may be useful in cross-national research. Future studies should focus on the sensitivity to change of FES-I.

Language: nl