Article

The cross-cultural adaptation and validation of Falls Efficacy
Scale-International (FES-I) in community-dwelling seniors in Greece. METHOD: For
cross-cultural adaptation, the back-translation procedure was utilised by four
bi-lingual translators. For validation, 89 community-dwellings (50 males, 39
females) aged 61-90 years old (mean: 72.87 +/- 6.04) completed four
questionnaires adapted into Greek; two instrument specific ones, FES-I and
Confidence in Maintaining Balance (CONFbal), and two generic Questionnaires,
Short-form Health Survey (SF-36v2) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ30).
Additionally, three functional/balance tests were compared against the FES-I. All
questionnaires and measurements were repeated after 7-10 days to explore
repeatability. RESULTS: Content validity was achieved as all participants found
the questionnaire appropriate and comprehensible. Validity of the FES-I yielded
moderate to strong correlations with CONFbal (r = 0.694, p<0.01), three SF-36
subscales (r ranging between 0.560 and 6.55, p<0.01), GHQ30 (r = 0.584, p<0.01)
and one functional test (r = 0.638, p<0.01 for Timed Up and Go test). FES-I's
test-retest reliability (ICC:0.951, SEM: 1.79, SDD:20.44%, r = 0.950) and
internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.925) were excellent, and
responsiveness across fallers and non-fallers yielded a large effect size (0.89),
indicating good discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS: The Greek FES-I was valid,
reliable, comprehensible and acceptable for the sample tested and may thus, be
used in cross-cultural rehabilitation research and practice.

Langue : ANGLAIS