Factorial Invariance of the Abbreviated Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale among Senior Women in the Nurses’ Health Study Cohort |
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| Authors: | Heather A Starnes Meghan H McDonough Jeffrey S Wilson Daniel K Mroczek Francine Laden Philip J Troped |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Kinesiology, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, USA;2. Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada;3. Department of Geography, Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA;4. Department of Medical Social Sciences and Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA;5. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Departments of Environmental Health and Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA;6. Department of Exercise and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA |
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| Abstract: | The purpose of this study was to examine the factorial invariance of the Abbreviated Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS-A) across subgroups based on demographic, health-related, behavioral, and environmental characteristics among Nurses’ Health Study participants (N = 2,919; age M = 73.0, SD = 6.9 years) living in California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. A series of multigroup confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to evaluate increasingly restrictive hypotheses of factorial invariance. Factorial invariance was supported across age, walking limitations, and neighborhood walking. Only partial scalar invariance was supported across state residence and neighborhood population density. This evidence provides support for using the NEWS-A with older women of different ages, who have different degrees of walking limitations, and who engage in different amounts of neighborhood walking. Partial scalar invariance suggests that researchers should be cautious when using the NEWS-A to compare older adults living in different states and neighborhoods with different levels of population density. |
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| Keywords: | Built environment walkability measurement psychometrics |
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