Cross-cultural adaptation and reliability testing of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator for optimizing care of Polish patients with frailty syndrome

Abstract

BackgroundFrail older people are at high risk of developing adverse outcomes, such as disability, mortality, hospitalization, and institutionalization. Previous research suggests that the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring frailty. The aim of this study was to adapt and to test the reliability of the Polish version of the TFI.MethodA standard guideline was used for translation and cultural adaptation of the English version of the TFI into Polish. The study included 100 Polish patients (mean age 68.2±6.5 years), among them 42 men and 58 women. Cronbach’s alpha was used for analysis of the internal consistency of the TFI.ResultsThe mean total TFI score was 6.7±3.1. Forty patients scored ≥5, which corresponded to being frail. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients of the instrument ranged from 0.68 to 0.72 and item-total correlation ranged from 0.12 to 0.52.ConclusionThe TFI is valid and reproducible for assessment of frailty syndrome among a Polish population. The Polish adaptation of the TFI proved a useful and fast tool for assessing frailty.

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“…Gobbens et al identified the Cronbach's alpha values for the total TFI as 0.73, for the physical component as 0.70, for the psychological component as 0.63, and for the social component as 0.34, and these results are similar to those of our study (13). Our findings were similar to those of the study by Gobbens et al as well as validity-reliability studies conducted in other countries, and the total Cronbach's alpha value for the TFI varied between 0.66 and 0.78, for the physical component varied between 0.57 and 0.79, for the social component varied between 0.43 and 0.53, and for the TFI social component varied between 0.36 and 0.49 (5,17,20,22,23). In other validity-reliability studies of the TFI, the internal consistency of the social component was low, which is similar to the results of our study.…”

“…The corrected item total correlations varied between 0.18 and 0.58 (21). The corrected item total correlations varied between 0.12 and 0.52 in the Polish validityreliability study, and it was stated that these values were >0.30 for all items in the Brazilian validity and reliability study (22,23). The German validityreliability study showed that the corrected item total correlations varied between −0.06 and 0.57 and that the "coping with problems" item exhibited negative correlation (17).…”

Tilburg frailty indicator

“…One reason might be the dichotomous response for mat, which does not create enough vari ance to distinguish between people. The corrected interitem correlations were comparable to the Polish TFI [25]. Anoth er reason might be that our samples were too fit.…”

“…The orig inal version was developed in the Dutch language providing a good internal con sistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.73) and a retest reliability of 0.79 [15]. The instru ment has been crossculturally adapted into four languages English, Portuguese, Danish and Polish [1,15,21,25]. Frail ty as a concept is also recognized in Ger man aging research [8] and is most com monly assessed in geriatric settings com bining physiological measures, such as grip strength and gait analysis with psy chological and social markers.…”

“…Persons with a total TFI score ≥ 5 are considered to be frail. It is economi cal, efficient and quick to answer with 14-15 min processing time and it has proven to be a reliable and valid instrument [1,13,15,22,25]. The psychometric prop erties of the TFI are good with a testre test reliability of 0.79 and the three do mains range from Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.67-0.78 for a 1year in terval [15].…”