Development and psychometric properties of the Ageism Questionnaire for Nurses (AQN).
- 1Department of Mental Health, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.
- 2Department of Mental Health, The Sixth Hospital of Changchun, Changchun, Jilin, China.
- 3Department of Mental Health, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China. [email protected].
Abstract
Background
With the accelerating aging of Chinese society, nursing professionals are progressively tasked with providing care for a growing population of elderly patients annually. Concurrently, manifestations of ageism within this professional cohort have become increasingly salient, underscoring an urgent imperative for empirical investigation into this phenomenon within healthcare contexts.Objective
This study aimed to develop and validate a theoretically grounded Ageism Questionnaire for Chinese Nurses (AQN), tailored to actual clinical nursing scenarios.Method
Initial questionnaire items were formulated through a synthesis of extant literature and semi-structured interviews with nursing practitioners. Subsequent refinement and item screening were conducted via the Delphi method. Data were collected between January and March 2025 from nurses engaged in elderly patient care across six public hospitals in Jilin Province.Data were collected using a sociodemographic sheet, Ageism Questionnaire for Nurses, the Fraboni Scale of Ageism, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale.The psychometric properties of the AQN, encompassing structural validity, content validity, criterion validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency reliability, were rigorously evaluated.Results
This study finally developed the Ageism Questionnaire for Chinese Nurses (AQN) with 2 dimensions and 23 items. Exploratory factor analysis verified the dimensions of ignoring elderly patients and rejecting elderly patients in the questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the two-dimensional structure of the questionnaire had a good fit. The alpha coefficients for the ignoring elderly patients dimension, rejecting elderly patients dimension, and total score were 0.907, 0.973, and 0.967, respectively. The split-half reliability was 0.864, 0.953, and 0.893, and the retest reliability was 0.889, 0.838, and 0.883, respectively. The criterion validity test results showed that the ignoring elderly patients dimension, rejecting elderly patients dimension, and total ageism attitude score were significantly correlated with work engagement.Conclusion
The AQN exhibits robust psychometric properties, positioning it as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing ageist attitudes among nurses in Chinese healthcare settings.
Related
- Development and psychometric properties of a questionnaire to evaluate the professional behavior of medical residents
- Exploring psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) among adolescent Palestinian refugee girls in Palestine and Jordan
- Illuminating gendered ageism with the WHO ageism experiences scale: a psychometric analysis and gender comparisons in a multi-country dataset.
- Psychometric Validation of the Ageism Scale for the Portuguese Context
- Development and psychometric properties evaluation of individualized patient education tool: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods study protocol
BibTeX
@article{xu2026development,
title = {{Development and psychometric properties of the Ageism Questionnaire for Nurses (AQN).}},
author = {Mingtu Xu and Bo Wu and Cong Fu and Hongyang Tian and Tiancheng Mo and Guangying Zhu and Liu Liu and Runhui Tian},
journal = {BMC nursing},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1186/s12912-026-05198-3},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972563},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Development and psychometric properties of the Ageism Questionnaire for Nurses (AQN).
AU - Mingtu Xu
AU - Bo Wu
AU - Cong Fu
AU - Hongyang Tian
AU - Tiancheng Mo
AU - Guangying Zhu
AU - Liu Liu
AU - Runhui Tian
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/06
JO - BMC nursing
DO - 10.1186/s12912-026-05198-3
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972563
AB - Background With the accelerating aging of Chinese society, nursing professionals are progressively tasked with providing care for a growing population of elderly patients annually. Concurrently, manifestations of ageism within this professional cohort have become increasingly salient, underscoring an urgent imperative for empirical investigation into this phenomenon within healthcare contexts.Objective This study aimed to develop and validate a theoretically grounded Ageism Questionnaire for Chinese Nurses (AQN), tailored to actual clinical nursing scenarios.Method Initial questionnaire items were formulated through a synthesis of extant literature and semi-structured interviews with nursing practitioners. Subsequent refinement and item screening were conducted via the Delphi method. Data were collected between January and March 2025 from nurses engaged in elderly patient care across six public hospitals in Jilin Province.Data were collected using a sociodemographic sheet, Ageism Questionnaire for Nurses, the Fraboni Scale of Ageism, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale.The psychometric properties of the AQN, encompassing structural validity, content validity, criterion validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency reliability, were rigorously evaluated.Results This study finally developed the Ageism Questionnaire for Chinese Nurses (AQN) with 2 dimensions and 23 items. Exploratory factor analysis verified the dimensions of ignoring elderly patients and rejecting elderly patients in the questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the two-dimensional structure of the questionnaire had a good fit. The alpha coefficients for the ignoring elderly patients dimension, rejecting elderly patients dimension, and total score were 0.907, 0.973, and 0.967, respectively. The split-half reliability was 0.864, 0.953, and 0.893, and the retest reliability was 0.889, 0.838, and 0.883, respectively. The criterion validity test results showed that the ignoring elderly patients dimension, rejecting elderly patients dimension, and total ageism attitude score were significantly correlated with work engagement.Conclusion The AQN exhibits robust psychometric properties, positioning it as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing ageist attitudes among nurses in Chinese healthcare settings.
SN - 1472-6955
ER -