School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
Gerontologist. 2024 Sep 1;64(9). doi: 10.1093/geront/gnae088.
Historically, aging research has focused primarily on health deterioration and negative aspects associated with aging. This has limited the scope of our understanding of the experience of aging and the relationships between aging and well-being from an integrative biopsychosocial perspective. In the same vein, there is a lack of reliable and valid assessments of aging that capture the positive aspects that characterize and improve the subjective experience of this period of life, particularly one that focuses on psychosocial well-being, including meaningful experiences and activities, group memberships, and general abilities. This study presents the development and validation of the Positive Aging Scale (PAS), a novel self-report assessment.
This was an online cross-sectional study conducted on 501 UK residents aged ≥60 years. A number of self-reported items and measures of positive aging, general health, well-being, and cognitive functioning were administered to the sample. We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and assessed the dimensionality, reliability, and concurrent criterion-related validity of the PAS.
The results suggested that a unidimensional solution represents the data well, with the positive aging factor adequately loading on 8 items, and the solution showing factorial invariance between young-old and old participants (i.e., ≥75 years). Total PAS scores positively correlate with general health, well-being, and cognitive functioning.
The PAS demonstrated strong psychometric properties and the findings highlight correlations between the PAS and key outcomes of positive aging, including general health. Implications for research and interventions are discussed.
从历史上看，衰老研究主要集中在健康恶化和与衰老相关的负面方面。这限制了我们从综合生物心理社会角度理解衰老体验以及衰老与幸福感之间关系的范围。同样，缺乏可靠和有效的评估方法来捕捉衰老的积极方面，这些方面可以描述并改善这一人生阶段的主观体验，特别是关注心理社会幸福感的方法，包括有意义的经历和活动、群体成员身份和一般能力。本研究提出了积极衰老量表（PAS）的开发和验证，这是一种新颖的自评评估方法。
这是一项在英国≥60 岁的 501 名居民中进行的在线横断面研究。对样本进行了多项自评项目和积极衰老、一般健康、幸福感和认知功能的测量。我们使用探索性和验证性因素分析评估了 PAS 的维度、信度和同时效标准相关的有效性。
结果表明，单维解决方案能很好地代表数据，积极衰老因子充分加载在 8 个项目上，该解决方案在年轻老年人和老年人参与者之间显示出因子不变性（即，≥75 岁）。PAS 的总分与一般健康、幸福感和认知功能呈正相关。
PAS 具有较强的心理测量学特性，研究结果突出了 PAS 与积极衰老的关键结果之间的相关性，包括一般健康。讨论了对研究和干预的意义。
