Development of a common scale for measuring healthy ageing across the world: results from the ATHLOS consortium
Author
Garcia Forero, Carlos
Wu, Yu-Tzu
Giné-Vázquez, Iago
De La Fuente, Javier
Daskalopoulou, Christina
Critselis, Elena
De La Torre-Luque, Alejandro
Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
Arndt, Holger
Ayuso-Mateos, José Luis
Bayes-Marin, Ivet
Bickenbach, Jerome
Bobak, Martin
Félix Caballero, Francisco
Chatterji, Somnath
Egea-Cortés, Laia
García-Esquinas, Esther
Leonardi, Matilde
Koskinen, Seppo
Koupil, Ilona
Mellor-Marsa, Blanca
Olaya, Beatriz
Pajak, Andrzej
Prince, Martin
Raggi, Alberto
Rodríguez-Artalejo, Fernando
Sanderson, Warren
Scherbov, Sergei
Tamosiunas, Abdonas
Tobias-Adamczyk, Beata
Haro, Josep Maria
ATHLOS Consortium
Publication date
2021-06ISSN
0300-5771
Abstract
Background: Research efforts to measure the concept of healthy ageing have been diverse and limited to specific populations. This diversity limits the potential to compare healthy ageing across countries and/or populations. In this study, we developed a novel measurement scale of healthy ageing using worldwide cohorts. Methods: In the Ageing Trajectories of Health-Longitudinal Opportunities and Synergies (ATHLOS) project, data from 16 international cohorts were harmonized. Using ATHLOS data, an item response theory (IRT) model was used to develop a scale with 41 items related to health and functioning. Measurement heterogeneity due to intra-dataset specificities was detected, applying differential item functioning via a logistic regression framework. The model accounted for specificities in model parameters by introducing cohort-specific parameters that rescaled scores to the main scale, using an equating procedure. Final scores were estimated for all individuals and converted to T-scores with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. Results: A common scale was created for 343 915 individuals above 18 years of age from 16 studies. The scale showed solid evidence of concurrent validity regarding various sociodemographic, life and health factors, and convergent validity with healthy life expectancy (r = 0.81) and gross domestic product (r = 0.58). Survival curves showed that the scale could also be predictive of mortality. Conclusions: The ATHLOS scale, due to its reliability and global representativeness, has the potential to contribute to worldwide research on healthy ageing.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
61 - Medical sciences
Keywords
Envelliment saludable
Capacitat funcional
Capacitat intrínseca
Teoria de resposta a ítems
Integració de dades
Activitats d’envelliment de la vida diària
Envelliment
Envejecimiento saludable
Capacidad funcional
Capacidad intrínseca
Teoría de respuesta a ítems
Integración de datos
Actividades de envejecimiento de la vida diaria
Envejecimiento
Healthy aging
Functional capacity
Intrinsic capacity
Item response theory
Data integration
Aging activities of daily living
Aging
Pages
13
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Collection
50; 3
Is part of
International Journal of Epidemiology
Citation
Sanchez-Niubo, Albert; Garcia Forero, Carlos; Wu, Yu-Tzu [et al.]. Development of a common scale for measuring healthy ageing across the world: results from the ATHLOS consortium. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2020, 50(3), p. 880–892. Disponible en: <https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/50/3/880/6020095A. Fecha de acceso: 14 sep. 2021. DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyaa236
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Ciències de la Salut [740]
Rights
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/