Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the validity and reliability of the scale, forming the Turkish translated version of the Successful Aging Scale (SAS) developed by Reker (2009). Survey method was used in the research. In this study, written permission was obtained from the scale owner and the institution, verbal verbal approval was obtained from the participants. Participants of the study consisted of 359 men and 151 women totally 510 people over 60 years of age living in the province of Ankara and the county of Çankaya. The data were collected using SAS consisting of 14 items. The original English form of the scale has 3 subcomponents These subcomponents and item counts are as follows: 1. Healthy life style (4 items), 2. Adaptive coping (4 items), 3. Engagement with Life (5 items), the scale is Likert type and measured as 1 (strongly disagree), 7 (strongly agree). The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients of the total and sub components of the original scale ranged from .72 to .84. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (Cronbach's Alpha coefficient and a Structural Equation Model for validity) was used for the reliability of the data. The linguistic validity of the scale was translated and translated by experts. Seven experts were consulted for content validity. The fit indices of the model were calculated by confirmatory factor analysis and the model fit well [?2 (27): 64.993, p < .01; ?2/df: 2.407; SRMR: .0319; RMSEA: .053; NNFI: .960; IFI: .976; CFI: 976; GFI: .976; AGFI: .951]. In the Turkish version of the scale, when a relationship between Adaptive coping and Engagement with Life factors is found to be 0.93, a second level factor called Layout is defined according to the literature. Since no factor can be loaded predominantly, as in Item 11, the other Item 1 factor load is less than 400; Items 4 and 14 were subtracted from relevant factors as they could not make a significant contribution to being above the Common Explanatory Variance (CEV) criterion of .500 at the time of compliance. It has been determined that SAS is a valid and reliable tool to measure attitudes towards aging in the study. For future studies, it is recommended that SAS be implemented in groups with different socio-demographic characteristics and the validity and reliability of these groups should be examined.

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