DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE MODIFIED FALLS EFFICACY SCALE INDONESIAN VERSION

Fear of falling leads to a decrease in the quality of life of the elderly. To identify the fear of falling in the elderly, one measure that can be used is the Modified Falls Efficacy Scale Indonesian Version (modified FES I) adopted from the Falls Efficacy Scale International (FES I) because the items in the original FES-I related to activities carried out by people with disabilities and is thus less appropriate to assess the fear of falling for active elderly people. It also needed to be further developed to adjust to the Indonesian situation and culture. The aim of the study is to evaluate the content validity and internal consistency of the modified Falls Efficacy Scale - Indonesian version (modified FES-I) among elders for use in Bahasa and Indonesian culture.The study had five steps,which were as follows: First, the original instrument (16 items) was translated from English intoBahasa by two linguistics and health professionals. Then, the back translation of the instrument was conducted (from Bahasa to English) by another two translators. After considering language equivalence, the content validity was tested in accordance with the agreement of seven geriatrics expertsincluding physiotherapists, lecturers in physiotherapy and medical doctors. 105 elders (mean age = 76 years) who had no balance disordersand who lived in a nursing home were selected using a proportional random sampling method. The content validity index (CVI) and Cronbach’salpha were used for analyzing content validity and internal consistency of the questionnaire. The modified FES-I contains 16 items. The CVI of this questionnaire was over 0.8 for the item level and over 0.9 for the overall questionnaire. Based on the experts’ suggestions, the question numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 11 were modified in accordance with the cultures and circumstances in Indonesia. Question number 12 was also modified because of its overlapping with number 11. Internal consistency was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha=0.957). The results showed that the modified FES-I was a valid and reliable tool to measure fall efficacy among elders in Indonesia.