Desarrollo y validación de la Escala breve de autoevaluación de la sabiduría (EBAS) en adultos mayores argentinos

Abstract

The article is aimed at designing a brief scale in Spanish to assess wisdom among older people. To do that, three studies were carried out. In the first one, a sample made up of 505 people of 50 year-old and older completed a questionnaire that included 45 wisdom-related items selected by experts. The application of a principal component analysis yielded a 20-item solution grouped into three components, which accounted for 42% of the variance, and with a satisfactory internal consistency (α=0.85). In a second study the structural validity of the scale was tested by means of a CFA applied to data gathered in a 290 people sample. Thee three independent dimension solution was the one that fitted best. Finally, in a third study involving 409 people 50 years and older, the concurrent validity and the stability of scale scores were tested. They were moderately related with scores of a conceptually related scale (r=0.45). Their relationship with a scale of social desirability was low (r=0.26), while the test-retest correlation was satisfactory (r=0.75). Theoretical implications, possible uses and limitations of the scale were discussed.