Background

Older adults face different challenges that affect their daily living. One of the most challenging and hazardous activities of everyday living, especially in the elderly, is stair climbing. Therefore the ability of stair climbing is inter alia used as an indicator for physical fitness and an independent life without the need of support. But until now there has not been an alternative to test the stair climbing ability than to actually climb stairs by using the stair up and down test. Therefore, this study evaluates a self-efficacy questionnaire as a complementing instrument to predict stair climbing abilities.

Methods

A new instrument has been developed for German-speaking countries to assess the role of stair self-efficacy for older people (SSE). The instrument, based on the questionnaire from Hamel and Cavanagh (2004), assesses stair self-efficacy during the performance of 10 different staircase management situations and gathers information about participation in these staircase situations. Reliability and construct validity of the questionnaire were tested with a sample of 121 older adults who completed the SSE questionnaire and the Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC-D) scale. As an additional validity check, 90 participants performed stair climbing in a physical test.

Results

Statistical analysis via a factor analysis showed that the SSE questionnaire is one-dimensional. In addition, reliability was tested by using Cronbach’s alpha and the split-half method via Spearman–Brown to calculate the internal consistency. Both methods yielded adequate results and furthermore the reliability was established via the results of the test–retest reliability. Validity was tested by the parallel testing, using the Pearson correlation between the SSE score and ABC scale, as well as physical testing.

Conclusions

Taken together, the SSE questionnaire offers the possibility to evaluate stair climbing performance without the need for physical performance. This questionnaire is especially helpful because the participants do not need to become physically stressed and exposed to the risk of falling before they are confident enough to climb stairs.