Abstract
Background
The importance of sleep has become increasingly recognized in geriatric research. There is a growing body of evidence that links poor sleep with numerous adverse health outcomes in older adults. As a result, assessing sleep quality and patterns in later life has become essential for accurately diagnosing and effectively treating sleep problems and their associated consequences. The Geriatric Sleep Questionnaire-6 (GSQ-6) is a widely used self-report questionnaire that assesses sleep quality and disturbances specifically among older adults. This study aimed to translate the scale into Arabic and evaluate its psychometric properties in an older Arabic-speaking adults’ population.
Methods
The GSQ-6 was translated into Arabic using forward and backward translation procedures, and was administered to a convenience sample of 539 older adults along with the 13-item Older People Quality of Life-Brief (OPQOL-brief), the 15-item Resilience Scale of Older Adults (RSOA), and the 11-item Older Adult Neglect and Abuse Scale (NAS) for validation purposes. Reliability was examined using Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega coefficients. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was also conducted to test the unidimensional factor structure.
Results
The CFA results supported the unidimensional factor structure proposed by the developers (CFI = 0.967, TLI = 0.945, RMSEA = 0.077. The McDonald’s omega values for the Arabic GSQ-6 was 0.70, indicating acceptable internal consistency. The measurement model had an equivalent factor structure, loadings, intercepts, and residuals across sex. correlated negatively with quality of life and resilience, and positively with neglect and abuse scores, supporting the validity of our Arabic translation.
Conclusion
The Arabic version of the GSQ-6 demonstrated good psychometric properties. The findings support its use as a valid and reliable measure for evaluating sleep quality among the Arabic-speaking older adult population.