Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the advanced activities of daily living scale in Chinese community-dwelling older adults

BACKGROUND: Assessment of Advanced Activities of Daily Living (AADL) is of great significance for early disability diagnosis in older adults; however, validated tools are lacking for Chinese populations. OBJECTIVE: To cross-culturally adapt and validate the AADL scale among Chinese community-dwelling older adults. METHODS: The original AADL scale was forward-backward translated, with culturally relevant items added through interviews; its validity and reliability were assessed in 433 community-dwelling Chinese older adults. RESULTS: The exploratory factor analysis identified three factors (social, productive, leisure), accounting for 47.31 % of variance. Confirmatory analysis confirmed good model fit. The AADL scores correlated significantly with GDS-5 and SF-12 scores and differed across employment, cognitive status, and functional disability groups. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability for the overall scale were 0.78 and 0.85, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The Chinese AADL scale exhibits satisfactory psychometric properties and can be readily employed to detect mild functional deficits in Chinese older adults.