Cross cultural adaptation, validation and the use of the Age-Friendly Cities and Communities Questionnaire (AFCCQ)

By 2024, it is estimated that the population of individuals aged over 65 years will outnumber those under the age of 15 in the WHO European Region. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been working since 2007 to support cities and communities in becoming more “age friendly". In 2015, the WHO released a set of core indicators to evaluate age-friendly cities, such as social participation and inclusion. The Age Friendly Cities and Communities Questionnaire AFCCQ, originally developed by Dikken and his team in the Netherlands, consists of 23 items that cover all the WHO core indicators. It aids in tracking improvements or declines in age-friendliness and offering insights into policy or program impacts. Link to AFCCQ. 

Sweden has its own uniqueness of culture and socioeconomic situations. Before the AFCCQ can be used in Sweden, a rigorous cross-cultural adaptation and validation to ensure its reliability and validity is thus warranted. The project aim is to perform a cross cultural adaptation and validation of the AFCCQ-Swedish (SE). After validation, the questionnaire will be available for the public to measure age-friendliness in different cities in Sweden.