Testing the Psychometric Properties of the Awareness of Age-Related Changes Questionnaire in a Sample of the Community-Dwelling Elderly in Iran

Subjective aging appears to be an important aspect of processes of psychological aging at large. However, there is a lack of an appropriate tool for assessing subjective aging in Iran. Therefore, the current study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the short form 10-item awareness of age-related changes (AARC) questionnaire in an Iranian sample. The statistical population contained all older adults aged 60 years old and above living in Kermanshah, Tehran, Hamedan, Semnan, Tabriz and Urmia, among whom two samples of 352 (170 male and 182 female) and 325 people (131 male and 194 female) were selected, using convenience sampling, for exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Participants filled out Casper et al.’s AARC questionnaire and Barker et al.’s perception of aging questionnaire. The factor structure of the questionnaire was analysed using exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation, results of which indicated that there were 10 items which exhibited the highest loadings on 2 emerged components include AARC-gains (5 items) and AARC-losses (5 items). In terms of reliability indicators, the internal consistency for two subscales of AARC questionnaire (gains and losses) were shown to be 0.85 and 0.91, respectively, using Cronbach’s Alpha-coefficient. The validity of the questionnaire was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and a test of convergent validity. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the fitted model for two subscales of questionnaire, namely AARC-gains and AARC-losses, has a good fit in the study’s sample, which supports the validity of the questionnaire. Moreover, the results of Pearson’s correlation coefficient revealed that the total score and the scores of the two subscales of AARC questionnaire have a direct and significant correlation with the total score and scores of subscales of Barker et al.’s perception of aging questionnaire. Consequently, the utilization of 10-item AARC questionnaire in future studies and in the consideration of the interrelationship of subjective aging and other significant elderly related variables may open up a new chapter in the elderly related studies in Iran.