Validity and Reliability of Persian Version of Onyx Social Capital Scale in Elderly People

Objectives: Establishing social relationships and creating and reinforcing social networks among the elderlypeople may create social capital. Thus, this research aimed to translate Onyx and Bullen socialcapital questionnaire into Persian version and evaluate its validity and reliability for elderly people. Methods & Materials: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 192 elderly people over 60 yearsold. To translate social capital instrument from English into Persian, we used the international quality oflife assessment approach. Criterion validity of the instrument was using Geriatric Depression Scale (5items), social health, and general health questionnaires. The obtained data were statistically analyzed. Results: According to our findings with regard to quality of the translation (clarity of translation, commonlanguage use, and conceptual equivalence, as well as general quality of translation), translators 3 and 4found most items had clarity of translation (86.6%), usage of common perception (76.3%), conceptualconsistency (76.3%), and overall quality of translation (78.9%). In other words, all were at a satisfactorylevel. The results showed that from experts' points of view, the Persian version of the questionnairewas good with regard to translation quality and acceptable at other aspects. In other words, it was notunacceptable with regard to any aspect. Interclass correlations (ICC) of the dimensions were more than0.7. The Cronbach coefficient α was calculated as 0.96 for the overall scale. Factor analysis of this studyamong Iranian elderly found 7 factors, which had discreet differences with Onyx configuration. Thus, thequestions related to neighborhood relations were put in the same factor with social cooperation, andsome items related to social efficiency were put in the factor of social cooperation and some in the factorof trust feeling. These 7 factors all together explained 48.71% of the variance (KMO=0.835). The distributionof the variance of scores for 7 factors was as follows: social cooperation, 58.11%; trust feeling,48.8%; life worthwhile, 44.8%; work relations, 83,6%; accepting differences, 79.6%; family relationships,58.6%; and local solidarity, 83.6%. Our findings also showed a negative and significant relationship betweendepression level and social capital (P=0.001). There was also a positive and significant associationbetween social and general health level with social capital (P=0.001). Conclusion: The Persian version of the quest