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Background: Hypertension is highly prevalent among the older adults. Self-care is an effective method for the secondary prevention of hypertension, but until now, there has been no specialized instrument to evaluate the ability for self-care in elderly Chinese patients with hypertension. Objectives: The aims of this study were to cross-culturally translate the Self-care of Hypertension Inventory into Chinese and apply it to elderly patients with preliminary hypertension. Methods: This is a methodological study with steps that included translation, synthesis, back-translation, back-translation review, expert committee review, pretesting, and submission to authors. We conducted preliminary psychometric analyses that included content validity, item-total correlation, internal consistency reliability, principal factor analysis, and test/retest reliability. Results: The translation equivalence was obtained between the adapted version and the original scale. The item-level content validity index had a range of 0.833 to 1. The scale-level content validity average method and Cronbach α were 0.986 and 0.858 for the total scale, respectively. The test/retest reliability was 0.949. Principal factor analyses showed the presence of 4, 1, and 1 latent factors in 3 separate subscales. Conclusions: The Self-care of Hypertension Inventory has been successfully translated and cross-culturally adapted to Chinese. It is suitable for application to elderly Chinese patients with hypertension.

Hypertension is the highest prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in China (Chen et al., 2018). According to the latest report, there are approximately 250 million people with hypertension, with the prevalence rate of 17.9% (Fan et al., 2020). The incidence of hypertension rises as the population grows older (Hansell et al., 2017; Hypertension Branch of Chinese Association for Promotion of International Communication in Medical Care et al., 2019). China has the world's largest elderly population. According to the latest demographic data from the National Bureau of Statistics in 2019, by the end of 2018, China's ageing population aged 60 and above had reached 249 million, accounting for 17.9% of the population (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2020). Lu et al. (2017) found that over 50% of the older people in China, who have target organ damage, experience hypertension. Therefore, it is very important for medical staff to help elderly patients with hypertension to improve self-care ability and effectively control their blood pressure.

Aim To test and compare the Self‐Care of Hypertension Inventory (SC‐HI) and Hypertension Self‐Care Profile (HBP SCP) among older patients with hypertension in China. Design A cross‐sectional observational study. Methods A convenience sampling of 220 older adults (120 male patients and 100 female patients) with hypertension and a mean age of 73.74 years was surveyed using the Chinese version of SC‐HI, the Chinese version of HBP SCP and the Chinese version of Exercise of Self‐Care Agency Scale (ESCA) during July‐September 2019. Psychometric analyses and Receiver Operating Characteristic curve analyses were performed on the collected data. Results The Cronbach's α of SC‐HI and HBP SCP was 0.858 and 0.953, respectively. The Pearson's coefficients between the SC‐HI total score and the ESCA total score, the HBP SCP total score and the ESCA total score were 0.494 and 0.700, respectively. The satisfactory sensitivity, specificity, cut‐off point and Area under the curve of SC‐HI were 0.8292, 0.5495, 120.5 and 0.754, respectively. As for HBP SCP, the values were 0.7907, 0.7582, 169.5 and 0.838, respectively. There was no significant difference between these two scales. Each has its own characteristics. However, the HBP SCP is more precise and effective for measuring self‐care ability in older patients.