Abstract
Accurate quality of life assessment is crucial for the development of our understanding of positive ageing. The Older People’s Quality of Life Scale (OPQOL) is a measure developed for use with older adult samples; however, its factor structure remains unclear and measurement consistency across population subgroups has not yet been confirmed. 432 Australian older adults aged 65+ completed the OPQOL as part of a telephone survey. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA; Mplus) was conducted to clarify the factor structure, while confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were run to confirm measurement invariance across age and gender subgroups. Application of a CFA to the original 32-item OPQOL yielded poor model fit. A subsequent EFA suggested a six-factor solution incorporating 23 of the original items. Measurement invariance of the proposed model was determined via a series of CFAs that demonstrated acceptable-to-good model fit and supported configural, metric and scalar invariance across both age and gender. A shorter version of the OPQOL that provides both a total and subscale scores is proposed, but the model requires further confirmation via CFA in other English-speaking samples. This version of the OPQOL demonstrates consistency of measurement across age and gender, which suggests that scores can be meaningfully compared between groups.
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Data are available through email request to the corresponding author.
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Syntax are provided in the attached supplemental materials.
Change history
11 June 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03291-9
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Funding
This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project LP170100461) in partnership with ECH Inc., Onkaparinga City and the South Australian Government Office for Ageing Well. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government, Australian Research Council, or other partner organisations.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by J E T Scott and T D Windsor. The first draft of the manuscript was written by J E T Scott and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Scott, J.E.T., Mazzucchelli, T.G., Luszcz, M.A. et al. Factor structure and measurement invariance of the older people’s quality of life scale. Curr Psychol 42, 12732–12742 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02507-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02507-8