Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the balance of Daily Living Scale for Chinese older adults.

PURPOSE: Assessing balance in daily life is a crucial component of fall prevention. The Balance in Daily Life (BDL) scale is used to assess the balance ability of older adults in real-life situations, but there is a lack of a Chinese version. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Balance in Daily Life (C-BDL) scale. METHODS: Translation and cross-cultural adaptation were conducted according to international guidelines. The translated scales were administered to 280 older adults from February to March 2025. Psychometric evaluation included content validity, construct validity, reliability and convergent validity. RESULTS: A total of 280 older adults participated in this survey. The scale-level content validity index average was 0.976. Exploratory factor analysis exhibited single-factor structure and explained 69.966% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that the single-factor model fits well. The overall Cronbach's α of the C-BDL was 0.913, and the test-retest reliability was 0.987. Convergent validity indicated that C-BDL was highly associated with the total ADL score (r = 0.694, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The C-BDL exhibits good psychometric properties and is an effective tool for future cross-cultural comparative studies on the balance in daily life of older adults in the community.