What is it about?
The world population is aging rapidly and this phenomenon leads to many challenges, including the increase burden of diseases and disabilities, increase of medical and long-term care needs, bankruptcy of national health insurance and so on. In dealing with these challenges, the World Health Organization (WHO) built an active aging framework and defined “active aging is a process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to improve quality of life as people age.” In order to measure active aging level and track the change after policies on aging implemented, The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) experts developed a tool, namely Active Aging Index (AAI), which includes 22 indicators that are able to measure active aging level in 4 domains: employment (4 indicators), social participation (4 indicators), independent/healthy/secure living (8 indicators), and capacity and enabling environment (4 indicators). The AAI tool can capture multidimensional aspects of active and healthy aging, tract the change over time, and provide policy advices to policymakers. A research team at the National Taiwan University College of Public Health, has adapted and validated a tool on a sample of 804 older adults in Vietnam. This study has examined and reported different psychometric properties of the AAI tool, including test-retest reliability, internal consistency, content validity, concurrent validity and construct validity. More details of research methods and results are reported in this published paper.
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Why is it important?
The contribution that this paper added is that it reported different types of psychometric properties of the AAI tool. Thus, it ensures the quality of the tool before it is being used in other cultures.
Perspectives
To adapt the AAI in a new culture we need to consider some AAI-related perspectives such as political participation, independent living, lifelong learning, employment after retirement, etc., because these aspects are perceived differently between countries, especially between western and eastern cultures.
Dr Vu Tuan Pham
Thai Nguyen University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vietnam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Adaptation and Validation of Active Aging Index Among Older Vietnamese Adults, Journal of Aging and Health, April 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0898264319841524.
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