ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Gazzetta Medica Italiana Archivio per le Scienze Mediche 2013 June;172(6):479-86

Copyright © 2013 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Useful questionnaire items for fall risk screening in communities of Japanese elderly

Yamada T. ¹, Demura S. ²

¹ Fukui National College of, Technology, General Education Center, (Natural Science and Technology), Geshi, Sabae, Fukui, Japan; ² Kanazawa University, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kakuma, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan

Aim: This study aimed to examine useful questionnaire items for the screening of fall risk in community dwellings of the Japanese elderly.
Methods: 1820 independently living elderly persons over the age of 60 years responded to a questionnaire containing 52 fall risk items representing 7 factors (physical function decrease, fall history, using devices, fear of falling and inactive, dosing, disease and disability, and environment). Point biserial correlation coefficients between the number of high fall risk responses (frequencies of responses, which are judged as high fall risk), each respondent category (internal consistency), and good-poor analysis based on the number of high fall risk responses (discriminant validity) were examined.
Results: Low internal consistency (r=0.18, p=0.127) and unwarranted discriminant validity (zo=3.0, p=0.999) were found only for the questions of “Do you act carefully?” in “fear of falling and inactive” factor. Internal consistencies for all items except for the above stated item were significant, with the question of “Can you put on trousers while standing?” regarding a “physical function decrease” factor showed the highest value (r=0.71, p < 0.05). In particular, items regarding “physical function decrease”, “fall history” and “using devices” factors showed greater internal consistency.
Conclusion: 51 items for fall risk screening of community dwelling elderly people re-selected in this study were judged to warrant internal consistency and discriminant validity.