Daly Jeanette M, Jogerst Gerald J
Department of Family Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1009, USA.
J Elder Abuse Negl. 2005;17(4):31-52. doi: 10.1300/j084v17n04_03.
Since elder abuse was first acknowledged as a health care and social problem, incidence and prevalence of mistreatment has been assessed sparingly in the United States and other countries around the world. Standardized instruments for determining the prevalence of elder abuse have not been developed and other instruments measuring a person's function and spousal violence have been adapted for the measurement of elder abuse prevalence. The purposes of this paper are to (1) ascertain the reading grade level of the most frequently used elder abuse prevalence instrument's text and (2) determine the content validity of the instruments with respect to the types of elder abuse included in them. A review of the instruments used to measure elder abuse prevalence was completed and a questionnaire was developed to measure the reading grade level and type of elder abuse content in four instruments. The Fry Readability, Flesch Reading Ease, and McLaughlin Grading formulas were used to determine reading grade level. A questionnaire regarding content validity was sent to 69 faculty and staff in one university department and a 59% return was achieved. The Conflict Tactics Scale and the Hwalek-Sengstock Elder Abuse-Screening Test had the lowest mean score at the 6th grade reading level. Results of content analysis for types of elder abuse demonstrated none of the instruments are comprehensive. Instruments to measure the prevalence are needed which balance readability and content validity.
自从虐待老年人首次被确认为一个医疗保健和社会问题以来，美国及世界其他国家对虐待行为的发生率和流行率的评估一直很少。用于确定虐待老年人流行率的标准化工具尚未开发出来，其他用于测量个人功能和配偶暴力的工具已被改编用于测量虐待老年人的流行率。本文的目的是：（1）确定最常用的虐待老年人流行率工具文本的阅读年级水平；（2）确定这些工具在其所包含的虐待老年人类型方面的内容效度。完成了对用于测量虐待老年人流行率的工具的审查，并编制了一份问卷，以测量四种工具的阅读年级水平和虐待老年人内容的类型。使用弗莱可读性公式、弗莱什易读性公式和麦克劳克林分级公式来确定阅读年级水平。一份关于内容效度的问卷被发送给某大学一个系的69名教职员工，回收率为59%。冲突策略量表和瓦尔克-森斯托克虐待老年人筛查测试在六年级阅读水平上的平均得分最低。对虐待老年人类型的内容分析结果表明，没有一种工具是全面的。需要开发出在可读性和内容效度之间取得平衡的测量流行率的工具。
