Translation, Adaptation, and Psychometric Testing of the Almere Technology Acceptance Questionnaire (ATAQ) Among Older Adults in China

BACKGROUND: Lack of information on technology Acceptance of Social Assistant robots (SARs) limits the application of robots in the elderly care sector. Currently, no study has not reported a robot acceptance assessment tool in China. PURPOSE: The current study aimed to translate the Almere Technology Acceptance Questionnaire (ATAQ) from English to Mandarin Chinese, perform cross-cultural adaptations, and to evaluate its psychometric properties among elderly people in China. METHODS: This study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 comprised the context relevance evaluation, instrument translation, and cultural adaption from English to Mandarin Chinese. Phase 2 involved a quantitative cross-sectional survey of psychometric testing among 317 elderly Chinese, including reliability and evaluation of construct validity. RESULTS: In Phase 1, the Context Relevance Index of all items was rated “3 = relevant” or “4 = totally relevant”, and the Translation Validity Index of the 100% items of the ATAQ was rated 3 or 4. The ATAQ-Chinese questionnaire comprised 30 items. In Phase 2, all items of the ATAQ-Chinese questionnaire had a CR above 3 (P<0.001). Correlation coefficients of entries in the current study ranged from 0.403 to 0.763 (P<0.001). Nine factors were extracted through Exploratory Factor Analysis, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 77.175%. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that the model had a good fit (χ(2)/df=2.006, RMSEA=0.069, RMR=0.059, GFI=0.816, IFI=0.913, TLI=0.896, CFI=0.912). The content validity index was 0.92 indicating that all questions were relevant. The value of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showed high validity (α= 0.945, 0.664–0.891). The test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.980, indicating that the tool was reliable. CONCLUSION: The Chinese version of ATAQ has good reliability and validity, and it is an acceptable, reliable, and valid tool for determining technology acceptance of Social assistant robots in older adults.