On the comparability of frailty scores under the accumulation of deficits approach

Abstract

Background While the cumulative deficit model is arguably the most popular instrument for population-level frailty screening, several questions remain unanswered regarding the comparability of the resulting scores across subpopulations. Methods Based on data from the five waves of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) we draw upon the alignment method to test for measurement invariance of frailty scores as per the accumulation of deficits approach. Results Our results show that adjusting for measurement non-invariance not only improves predictive validity of our frailty measures, but resulting scores are more consistent with what is theoretically expected from them in longitudinal research. Conclusions There are clear potential benefits of measurement invariance testing as a general analytical framework from which to tackle with issues of comparability in frailty research.