Reliability and validity of the fall risk self-assessment scale for community-dwelling older people in China: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: Falls are a common and serious public health issue among older adults, contributing to the loss of independence, psychological distress, and incapability to engage in meaningful occupations, etc. However, there is a lack of abundant information about the fall risk self-evaluation scale for community-dwelling older people. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the preliminary reliability and validity of the fall risk self-assessment scale (FRSAS) among community-dwelling older adults. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 230 individuals aged 65 years and over were recruited by a convenience sampling between October and December 2020 from three communities in Haidian district, Beijing. Eligible participants were required to fill in the general condition questionnaire and the fall risk self-assessment scale. The reliability and validity were analyzed by using SPSS 20.0. RESULTS: Two hundred twenty-two participants completed the assessment as required (the completion rate was 96.52%). The most items of FRSAS were understood by older adults, which was completed in 10 min. Cronbach’s α and intraclass correlation coefficient ICC (2,1) of the scale were 0.757 and 0.967 respectively, suggesting good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Exploratory factor analysis yielded 14 factors that explained 61.744% of the variance. Five items failed to be categorized into any factors because the factor loading of these items was less than 0.4. A future large-sample study needs to be conducted to explore its construct validity. The total scores and dimensional scores except for C-dimension showed significant differences between participants who had experienced a fall in the previous 6 months and those who had not (P < 0.05), indicating good discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS: The fall risk self-assessment scale including 41 items demonstrated relatively high feasibility as well as satisfactory results in the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminant validity. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Registration number: ChiCTR2000038856; Date of registration: 7 Oct 2020. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-022-02962-3.