Preparing a Short Version of the International Falls Efficacy Scale to Iranian Olders

Fear of falling can lead to discomfort and decreased quality of life in elderly people. The purpose of this study was to prepare a short version of the International Falls Efficacy Scale for older adults, originally designed to measure fear of falling. In this regard and to confirm the construct validity of short version of the international fall efficacy scale, 200 (108 male and 92 female) older adults with different levels activity were selected by available sampling and then completed the questionnaire. Methods of the research include: translation-back method and face validity to confirm accuracy of the scale translation. Confirmatory factor analysis and Pierson’s correlation was used for approving the structural and convergent validity of the scale. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was used for internal consistency, and intra-class correlation coefficient under test-retest method was used to study temporal reliability of items and percentile points were used for normalization. The reliability of the questionnaire was obtained using Cronbach's Alpha of 0.95 and the coefficient of inter-class correlation of 0.87. In order to investigate structural validity and convergent, confirmatory factor analysis and the main version of the international scale of respectively were used. The results of the study indicated that the indices were optimal (RMSEA=0.02, CFI=1, TLI =1). The brief Persian version of the scale (FES-I) can be referred as a useful tool to evaluate the fear of falling of Iranian older adults.