Development of the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment for the elderly in Japan

Abstract

ObjectiveHome safety assessment and intervention is a key component in the management of fall risk in elderly people. However, a standardised assessment for home safety has not yet been established in Japan. We developed a Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment by partially modifying the original version according to house structures and lifestyles in Japan and examined its inter-rater reliability and content validity.MethodsJapanese elderly in the community who had fear of falls were recruited to investigate the reliability of the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment. Two occupational therapists simultaneously visited a participant’s home to perform the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment independently. Further, an expert panel of 18 occupational therapists evaluated the relevance of each item of the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment.ResultsFifty elderly people (aged 78.2 ± 7.1 years) participated in this reliability study. The most frequent hazards were identified as internal steps/stairs, seating, bathroom, bath, and external steps/stairs. Forty-nine items (69%) in the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment were rated to have fair to good (0.40 < κ < 0.75) or excellent (κ ≥ 0.75) reliability as well as excellent validity (item content validity ≥0.78). These items were concerned with basic activities of daily living and some simple instrumental activities of daily living. The scale content validity was 0.78 ± 0.16 but was not excellent (scale content validity index <0.90).ConclusionsThis study suggested that 49 items in the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment were appropriate for home safety assessment for Japanese elderly. Further research is necessary to improve the reliability and validity of the present version of the Japanese version of the Westmead Home Safety Assessment for this population.

Housing Assessment Tools Developed or Adapted for Use in East and Southeast Asia: A Scoping Review

“…This study also confirmed sufficient reliability, content and factorial validity, as well as clinical utility (Lai et al, 2019). The WeHSA was developed as a tool for occupational therapists to identify environmental hazards in the homes of older persons who are at risk of falling (Hasegawa & Kamimura, 2018). The original version has been evaluated as a reliable tool (Clemson et al, 2010; and there is evidence supporting the content validity .…”

“…The selection procedure resulted in a final inclusion of 22 articles (Chin et al, 2013;de Guzman et al, 2013;Eshkoor et al, 2013;Hasegawa & Kamimura, 2018;Kamei et al, 2015;Kittipimpanon et al, 2012;Lai et al, 2019;Lee & Yoo, 2015;Leung, 2019;Lin et al, 2007;Matchar et al, 2019Matchar et al, , 2017Mitoku & Shimanouchi, 2014;Pattaramongkolrit et al, 2013 Safety house checklist (Carter et al, 1997); Home-screen scale (Johnson, et al, 2001) C. 2008; Romli et al, 2016Romli et al, , 2018Sophonratanapokin et al, 2012;Sukkay, 2016;Tan et al, 2018;Tongsiri et al, 2017). A summary of the included articles is shown in Table 1.…”

“…The HOME-FAST has been translated into Malaysian (Romli et al, 2016(Romli et al, , 2018Tan et al, 2018) and Hong Kong versions (Lai et al, 2019). In the Malaysian Malaysia (Romli, 2016;Romli, 2017a) Hong Kong (Lai, 2019) Australia (Clemson, 2010) Japan (Hasegawa and Kamimura, 2018) Purpose of the tool Inter-rater and testretest reliability (Lai, 2019) Inter-rater reliability (Clemson, 2010); Inter-rater reliability (Clemson, 1999b) Inter-rater reliability (Hasegawa and Kamimura, 2018) Validity Predictive validity (Mackenzie, 2009) Cross-cultural validity (Romli, 2017a) Content validity (Lai, 2019); Factorial validity (Lai, 2019) Content validity (Clemson, 1999a) Content validity (Hasegawa and Kamimura, 2018) Others Responsiveness (Mackenzie, 2009) Clinical utility (Mackenzie, 2017) Feasibility (Romli, 2016) Clinical utility (Lai, 2019) Cross-cultural adaptation (Hasegawa and Kamimura, 2018) Number version, the items were not changed from the original, but the reliability, cross-cultural validity and feasibility (Romli et al, 2016) were still examined with satisfactory results. In the Hong Kong version, through a revision process, some original items were merged to be more easily understood by older adults when written in Chinese.…”

“…The original version has been evaluated as a reliable tool (Clemson et al, 2010; and there is evidence supporting the content validity . The original WeHSA was modified and translated to a Japanese version by Hasegawa et al (Hasegawa & Kamimura, 2018), and in the revision process, original items such as "seating" and "bed" were adapted to the Japanese specific conditions of sitting on a cushion and sleeping on a futon in tatami room. Also, some of the expressions were changed to suit Japanese housing design (e.g.…”

“…"Bath" was changed to "Bathing room/Dressing room"). In this Japanese version, after examining the reliability and content validity, 49 items were considered to be appropriate (Hasegawa & Kamimura, 2018).…”