Designing and determining psychometric properties of the Domestic Elder Abuse Questionnaire

The purpose of this methodological study was to design and determine the psychometric properties of a new and specific questionnaire for assessingdomestic elder abuse in the context of Iranian culture. This study was conducted in three phases. In the firstphase, phenomenology was applied to explore the meaning of domestic elder abusephenomenon. In the second phase, a questionnaire was compiled, using the results ofthe qualitative research implemented in the first phase, in conjunction with theinductions from the expert panel. In the third phase, the psychometric propertiesincluding face validity, content validity, construct validity, internal consistency, andtest- retest reliability were measured. 325 elderly people who were selectedrandomly participated in the last stage. The initial 78 item questionnaire designed using the results of first andsecond phases of study, reduced to 49 items in the process of determining the faceand content validity. The result of exploratory factor analysis showed that thisquestionnaire contains 8 factors including care neglect, psychological abuse,physical abuse, financial abuse, curtailment of personal autonomy, abandonment,financial neglect and emotional neglect. These 8 factors explained nearly 79.93% ofthe variance. The results of known group's comparisons showed that thisquestionnaire could successfully discriminate between subgroups of elderly peoplein the indexes of re - hospitalization and functional status. The internal consistency(Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.90–0.975. Test-retest reliability (ICC) of the questionnairewith interval time of two weeks was 0.98(p < 0.001). We concluded that the Domestic Elder Abuse questionnaire with 49items appears to be a promising tool, providing reliable and valid data helping todetect abuse among elders in different settings such as clinical settings, homes andresearch environments by health care providers and researchers.