Cross-Cultural and Psychometric Validation of the Ageism in the Organizational Context Scale in Nursing Students

Aim: To conduct the cross-cultural and psychometric validation of the ‘Ageism in the Organizational Context Scale’ with Peruvian nursing students. Methods: This is a methodological quantitative study conducted with 882 nursing students between February and August 2023. For the adaptation process, the forward-backward method of the original version from Portuguese to Spanish was used. The content analysis was performed with the participation of specialist judges, while for the internal structure of the construct, confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance with multigroup confirmatory factor analysis were used. Results: Content validity was 0.93. The best internal structure of the construct is represented by the bi-factor model for the 14-item scale (CFI and TLI > 0.97, RMSEA = 0.057 and SRMR = 0.028). The measurement invariance by sex for the four levels (configural, metric, strong and strict) is also satisfactorily fulfilled. The internal consistency of the bifactor model according to the hierarchical omega (> 0.85) and the H coefficient for the latent construct (> 0.90) presented high reliability. In addition, the ordinal alpha coefficient and McDonald omega presented high precision (≥ 0.85). Conclusion: The Ageism in the Organizational Context Scale adapted to the Peruvian version with 14 items showed excellent validity evidence based on the internal structure of the construct for a bifactor model and high reliability for the general score and for the two dimensions in nursing students. Identifying ageism towards the older population among nursing students is important in the training of future nurses, eliminating prejudice and improving the quality of care in this population.