(PS1-D81) Establishing Psychometric Properties and Norms of the OASR and OABCL in a Taiwanese Community Sample

With birth rates declining and longevity increasing, people aged 65 years or older will grow from 1 in 11 in 2019 to 1 in 6 people in 2050 (United Nations, 2019). Providing mental health care for this population has become more critical. Few measures accurately and sensitively assess psychopathology for older adults in Taiwan. The Older Adult Self-Report (OASR) is a standardized rating form used to evaluate adaptive functioning and a broad spectrum of emotional, behavioral, social, and cognitive problems plus substance use, illnesses, and living accommodations for adults aged 60 years and above. Its parallel form, the Older Adult Behavior Checklist (OABCL), is completed by a collateral informant who knows the adult.
 

The purpose of this study was to establish the psychometric properties and norms for the OASR and OABCL in a Taiwanese community sample. A total of 318 older adults aged 60 to 93 (males = 47.5%; females = 52.5%) and their collateral informants (spouse/partner = 44.7%; grown children = 26.1%; relative = 13.5%) aged 20 to 89 were recruited from the northern, middle, southern, and eastern geographic regions in Taiwan to participate in the research. A series of questionnaires, including the OASR and OABCL, were administered in random order to the older adults and their collateral informants.
 

Internal consistencies of the Adaptive Functioning (AF; OASR: Cronbach's αs = .69 to .81; OABCL: Cronbach's αs = .70 to .80), Syndrome (SY; OASR: Cronbach's αs = .66 to .90; OABCL: Cronbach's αs = .71 to .91), DSM-Oriented scale (DSM; OASR: Cronbach's αs = .55 to .86; OABCL: Cronbach's αs = .54 to .86), Total Problems (TP; OASR: Cronbach's α = .96 ; OABCL: Cronbach's α = .96), and Critical Items (CI; OASR: Cronbach's α = .85 ; OABCL: Cronbach's α = .87) scales of the OASR and OABCL were moderate to high based on the ratings of the 318 older adults and their collateral informants. Convergent validity of several subscales of the OASR and OABCL was confirmed with subscales on the Personality Assessment Screener for the Taiwanese sample. For example, the TP (OASR: r = .68; OABCL: r = .45) and CI (OASR: r = .60; OABCL: r = .41.) subscales and the Total scale of the Personality Assessment Screener (PAS) and the AF (OASR: rs = -.18 to -.37; OABCL: rs = -.13 to -.25), SY (OASR: rs = .45 to .62; OABCL: rs = .29 to .43), and DSM (OASR: rs = .37 to .62; OABCL: rs = .23 to .44) subscales and the Total scale of the PAS were correlated. Cross-informant agreement correlations were obtained with the OASR and OABCL: AF (rs = .49 to .67), SY (rs = .44 to .58), DSM (rs = .33 to .56), TP (r = .54), and CI (r = .60) subscales.
 

Two-way analyses of variance suggest that age and gender affected the ratings of Taiwanese older adults and their collateral informants on the CI scale and several subscales of the AF, SY, and DSM scales (exception is the TI scale). Preliminary results suggest acceptable psychometric properties of the OASR and OABCL in this older adult Taiwanese community sample but highlight the need for different cut-off values (e.g., using the ≥ 90th percentile as the criterion) for each gender by age group. Future studies should further compare the Taiwanese older adults' ratings of the OASR and OABCL to those of other normative samples to examine cultural differences.