The Italian Version of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator

Abstract

This study aims to assess the reliability, construct validity (convergent/divergent), and criterion validity of the Italian version of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI). The TFI is a self-report questionnaire for screening frailty in older adults. Two hundred and sixty-seven community-dwelling older adults were involved. Psychometric properties were analyzed using validated instruments. Adverse outcomes such as disability, falls, and visits to a general practitioner were detected. Participants were mainly women (59.9%), with a mean age of 73.4 years (SD = 6.0). Internal consistency reliability was acceptable. Construct validity was good, since each item of the TFI correlated as expected with corresponding frailty measures. Convergent and divergent validity were adequate for all the domains of the TFI. Criterion validity was excellent for disability and mediocre for the other two outcomes. This study supports the validity of the Italian TFI and offers to clinicians and scientists a multidimensional instrument for identifying frail individuals in the Italian context.

Changes in the Household Structures of the Elderly: Household Projections for Turkey, 2016-2050

“…The total TFI score and the average score of all subdimensions were statistically significantly higher in women than in men (p < 0.001). These results were similar to those of other validity-reliability studies of the TFI performed worldwide (17,20). In the original study, Gobbens et al developed the TFI with two groups: 245 and 234 people with average ages of 80.3 and 80.2 years with a total TFI score of 4.7/4.7, physical score of 2.6/2.5, psychological component score of 0.9/1.0, and social component score of 1.2/1.3 (13).…”

“…The internal consistency for the total TFI score was at acceptable levels but the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient and adjusted item total correlations showed that the internal consistency reliability coefficients were low for some of the subitems of the TFI, particularly those of the social component. These results are similar to the results obtained for the original version of the TFI and other translated versions (5,13,20). CFA of the scale revealed that the RMSEA and SRMR values were <0.08 and that the CFI, GFI, and AGFI values were >0.90.…”

Kinect-based gait analysis for automatic frailty syndrome assessment

“…Our results confirm that the TUG time T is significantly correlated with the TFI, both total score TFIts and physical domain TFIpd [8]: r = 0.470 (p-value = 0.012), r = 0.473 (p-value = 0.011), respectively. More importantly we can notice that most of the proposed gait features correlates with the TFI as well.…”

“…Most of the participants were female (83.3%) and the mean age was 75.6 ± 7.5 years. The participants were asked to fill the TFI questionnaire; in particular, in this study the total score of the TFI in addition to the 8 items of the TFI physical domain have been considered [8]. The TFI is a recognized instrument for frailty detection and can be used to unveil correlation between other objective features and the onset of the syndrome.…”

“…A large TUG time is related to a lower physical function and it is often used as an indicator of physical frailty. Other assessment methods are based on questionnaires such as the Tillburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) [7,8]. TFI is a simple and easy tool to assess frailty and gives a total score of frailty ranging from 0 to 15, with a cut-off score of 5.…”