Validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Ageism Scale for Dental Students in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Introduction:
The proportion of the elderly population has increased in Iran, and considering the increasing burden of their referrals to receive dental services in the near future, determining dentists’ attitudes towards ageism seems necessary. We aimed to determine the validity and reliability of the Ageism Scale for Dental Students (ASDS) in Persian users.

Material and methods:
It was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out among the fourth-year dental (clinical) students at Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences in 2022. The participants were selected using the census method. The research instruments included a demographic questionnaire and the ASDS. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS-V23 and Smart PLS software-V3.

Results:
The mean age of participants was 24.74 years with a standard deviation of 6.01. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.712) and intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC = 0.646) reliability of the translated questionnaire were within the acceptable range. The scale had appropriate face validity and content validity because the impact factor values were higher than 1.5 and its content validity index was higher than 0.79. After performing the exploratory factor analysis, five factors were identified, which explained 59.55% of the total variance.

Conclusions:
Since the Persian version of the ASDS has appropriate levels of validity and reliability, it can be administered in the health evaluation checklist of Iranian elderly as one of the auxiliary tools to determine the ageism towards the elderly in dentistry.