[Aging and spirituality: Factorial structure and reliability of 2 scales]

Abstract

Introduction: In the field of gerontology, the study of the improvement of health and quality of life, and «successfully aging», spirituality plays a key role and, is one of the current research approaches. However, its incorporation into scientific literature is arduous and slow, a fact that is in part due to the absence of developed and validated measurement tools, particularly, in the Spanish speaking area. This work aims to present evidence of the psychometric properties of two tools for the measurement of spirituality: the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp) and the GES Questionnaire.

Materials and methods: A sample of 224 elderly persons from Valencia (Spain) was recruited, on which two confirmatory factor analyses were estimated, with the proposed a priori structures for each tool, together with several reliability coefficients.

Results: Both models presented an good fit to the data: χ(2)51=104.97 (P<.01); CFI=.973; RMSEA=.076 for the FACIT-Sp, and χ(2)17=31.76 (P>.05); CFI=.996; RMSEA=.050 for the GES Questionnaire. Reliability indices also supported the use of the scales in elderly population, with alphas of .85 and .86, respectively.

Conclusions: These results may be useful as a starting point to include spirituality in works that aim to discover the mechanisms involved in successful aging.

Keywords: Análisis factorial confirmatorio; Confirmatory factor analysis; Cuestionario GES; Envejecimiento con éxito; Espiritualidad; FACIT-Sp; GES Questionnaire; Spirituality; Successful aging.