The Assessment of Perceived Health in the Elderly: Portuguese and Spanish Validations of the Perceived Health Scale (PHS)

Perceived health may be defined as an indicator of general health and well-being and it is one of the indicators most used in gerontology. There are several instruments developed to measure perceived health. Among them, in Spanish context, the Perceived Health Scale (PHS) is a brief instrument, specifically designed to be used with elderly population. The aim of this paper is to validate two versions of the PHS via multi-sample Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The multi-sample routine tests the measurement invariance of the Portuguese and the Spanish versions. The populations in which the two versions have been validated are elderly of Spain and Angola. Data came from a cross-sectional survey of 1003 elderly from Angola (Portuguese version) and 224 elderly from Spain (Spanish version). Overall, results showed that the scale had an adequate one-factor confirmatory solution, satisfactory reliability indices, adequate convergent validity, and that the instrument is invariant across versions. The discussion relates the results with the existing literature and posits the contributions of the paper in two research fields: psychometric or psychological assessment improve and elderly well being.