Developing a Cross-National Disability Measure for Older Adult Populations across Korea, China, and Japan

This study aims to develop a universal scale for comparing cognitive and physical functions among countries using health survey data from China, Korea, and Japan. This study used the data of 934 participants from the Korean Longitude Study of Aging, 2506 participants from the China Health and Retirement Longitude Study, and 178 participants from the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement. Each physical and cognitive function item in the three countries has five key items. The anchoring method used the key items to link each cognitive and physical function of the three countries. We investigated the psychometric characteristics of the final item using the Rasch analysis. We extracted 13 items of 19 cognitive function items and 20 items out of 29 physical function items using the anchoring method and the Rasch analysis. The Rasch analysis showed good fit statistics for 13 cognitive function items and 20 physical function items. The measurement scale developed in this study will enable valid comparisons of older adults’ cognitive and physical functions across these three countries.