Psychometric properties of the simplified Chinese version of Kihon Checklist in the Chinese older people

BackgroundThe 25-item Kihon Checklist (KCL) is a comprehensive screening tool for identifying frail older people who are at risk of becoming dependent. It has been widely used in different countries and revealed good validity and reliability. ObjectivesThe KCL was translated into Simplified Chinese (KCL-SC) in 2019. The study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the KCL-SC. MethodsThe study employed a cross-sectional study design and recruited 258 community-dwelling older people in Shenzhen, China. The reliability of internal consistency, split-half reliability and 2-week test-retest reliability were evaluated. An expert panel examined the content validity. Concurrent validity of KCL-SC was evaluated by its correlation with the other measure of frailty (FRAIL Scale, FS), activities of daily living (ADL, Katz index of independence in ADL) and depressive mood (5-item Geriatric Depression Scale, GDS-5). Construct validity was examined by exploratory factor analysis. Criteria validity in discriminating different frailty status (with FS as criteria) were evaluated with the receiver-operating characteristic curves (ROC). ResultsThe Cronbach's alpha was 0.827; split-half reliability coefficient was 0.737; and test-retest reliability was 0.974. The content validity index was 0.960. The KCL-SC and dimensions were significantly correlated with the scores of FS, Katz ADL and GDS-5 (p < 0.05). Seven factors were recognised in the exploratory factor analysis and explained 56.36% of the total variances. The areas under the ROC in discriminating frail/nonfrail, frail/prefrail and prefrail/robust were 0.925, 0.880 and 0.758, respectively. The cut-off values for identifying prefrailty and frailty were 11 and 5, respectively. ConclusionsThe KCL-SC revealed satisfactory psychometric properties in identifying frailty among the Chinese community-dwelling older people.