Evaluation of Psychometric Properties of Persian Version of Geriatric Mistreatment Scale in the Elderly Living in Tehran in 2017-2018: A Descriptive Study

Elderly abuse is one of the major social health problems and has a significant impact on the quality of life of the elderly. Faster detection of elder abuse and providing appropriate remedies will reduce its subsequent complications. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of translating and determining the psychometric properties of the Geriatric Mistreatment Scale (22 items) in the elderly living in Tehran, Iran.

This descriptive study was conducted on 301 elderly people living in Tehran in 2017-2018. The translation was done by the Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) protocol method; after obtaining written permission from the original designer. Exploratory factor analysis was used to evaluate construct validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest were used to determine reliability.

Cronbach's alpha was 0.80 for all items and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient was 0.81 which both showed appropriate reliability of the Persian version of Geriatric Mistreatment Scale. In the exploratory factor analysis, three factors (physical, psychological, economic) were extracted by principal axis factoring that determined 42% of cumulative variance.

The findings of the present study indicate that the Persian version of the Geriatric Mistreatment Scale is a valid and reliable tool that can be used as an indigenous tool to assess elder abuse, which is a public health problem.