Background and objective: Sense of Coherence (SOC) is a construct relating to coping strategies in the face of traumatic events. SOC is defined as a personal disposition towards perceiving life experiences as understandable, manageable and meaningful. The construct has shown itself to be a predictor of self-reported and objective health in a variety of contexts. Although the SOC construct has been studied, among the elderly in particular, the scale has never been validated in the Spanish aged population. This paper reports on the cross-cultural validation of Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence Scale (OLQ-13) in a sample of Spanish senior citizens.
Subjects and method: We studied a sample of population from 8 locations across Spain, totaling 419 subjects aged 70 years or over. The psychometric attributes of the scale were studied. These included acceptability, scale assumptions, internal consistency, factor structure, construct validity (convergent validity, differential analyses, inter-domains correlation), and precision.
Results: The internal consistency of the scale was adequate (Cronbach = 0.80). SOC showed moderate correlations with self-reported indices of physical health, quality of life and depression. The scale was found valid in differential analyses conducted for gender, age groups, levels of disability and functional impact of diseases. Principal components analysis yielded four factors accounting for 65.59% of the variance. The Meaningfulness domain acted as an independent factor.
Conclusions: The OLQ-13 is a valid and reliable instrument for use on Spanish elderly populations, including those with low educational level.