STRUCTURAL VALIDITY OF THE INVENTORY OF NEGATIVE AND DISTURBING EMOTIONAL RESPONSES (IREN-35) AMONG INDIGENOUS OLDER ADULTS IN COLOMBIA

Vollständiger Abstract

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The Inventory of Negative and Disturbing Emotional Responses in Pandemic Contexts (IREN-35) was developed to assess emotional reactions associated with public health emergencies. However, evidence regarding its psychometric performance in Indigenous older adult populations remains limited. This study aimed to examine the structural validity of the IREN-35 in a sample of Indigenous older adults from Nariño, Colombia. A cross-sectional instrumental study was conducted with 300 Indigenous adults aged 55 years and older selected through convenience sampling. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine the underlying factorial structure, item loadings, and explained variance of the instrument. The analysis supported a three-factor solution, with factor loadings ranging from 0.40 to 0.77, explaining 60.6% of the total variance. Compared with the original four-factor model, the findings supported an alternative factorial configuration in which emotional responses related to perceived threat were integrated into a more parsimonious and conceptually coherent structure. Overall, the findings provide evidence of adequate structural validity for the IREN-35 in Indigenous older adults and support its use for assessing negative and disturbing emotional responses in post-pandemic contexts, while highlighting the importance of considering cultural characteristics when evaluating emotional constructs in ethnically diverse populations.