Design and Psychometric Evaluation of the Older Adults' Place Attachment Instrument

Objectives: Due to the importance of place attachment in the older adults, it seems necessary to identify the older adults' perception of this concept and its dimensions due to their special emotions, conditions and needs. Therefore, present study aimed to design and psychometrics the instrument of older adults' place attachment. Materials and Methods: The present research is a mixed method study with sequential exploratory approach to design and psychometrics instrument that was conducted in 2020-2021 in two quantitative and qualitative phases between community-dwelling older adults in Aran and Bidgol city. Based on the results of two stages of literature review and qualitative interview, the item pool was designed. The face and content validity of the initial instrument was assessed by a panel of specialists and the older adults. Also, the structural validity of the instrument was investigated by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 414 older people who were selected by cluster sampling according to the inclusion criteria. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by internal consistency and temporal stability. SPSS.24 and AMOS.24 software were used for statistical analysis. Results: In the examining of content validity of the instrument, most items had indices of CVR above 0.7, CVI above 0.79 and kappa coefficient above 0.74 and items with low scores were removed or modified. In the examining of structural validity among older adults with a mean age of 70.43±8.84 years based on exploratory factor analysis, were extracted three factors of "emotional, physical attachment and dependence" at the home level and three factors of "emotional, social and physical attachment" at the neighborhood level, which explained 61.75% and 50.06% of the total variance respectively. Also, the measurement model had an acceptable fit in the confirmatory factor analysis at home (GFI=0.877, CFI=0.916, RMSEA=0.080) and neighborhood (GFI=0.809, CFI=0.860, RMSEA=0.077) levels. The reliability of the instrument was confirmed using internal consistency (α = 0.9) and temporal stability (ICC = 0.8) at both levels. Conclusion: The designed place attachment tool has two levels of home and neighborhood for the study of community-dwelling urban older adults and has acceptable validity and reliability. This tool can be used in research and policymaking after further investigation in other cities.