Journal of

Introduction and purpose: Optimization in Primary and Secondary Control Scale designed at 1998 by Heckhausen and colleagues in Germany. Therefore, this study was designed to assess psychometric properties of Optimization in Primary and Secondary  Control Scale (OPS) in older adults.

Material and Methods: This descriptive study used convenience sampling method, adopted from the theory of Klein, to collect 310 elderly men and women in Tehran city.

Findings: Our samples consisted of 142 women and 168 men with an average age of 68.94 years old. The exploratory factor analysis was run using principal component analysis which extracted five components (optimization, selective primary control, compensatory primary control, selective secondary control and compensatory secondary Control).  Reliability was ensured by test-retest (0.58 to 0.72) and Cronbach’s alphas (0.57 to 0.74). The factor-based internal consistency in the English version ranged from 0.61 to 0.82.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that Persian version of the OPS is a valid and reliable tool to assess utilization of lifespan optimization and control strategies in elderly populations. In recent years, successful aging has been the centre of researchers’ attention due to importance of elderly ability to control life events. Therefore, it is of great importance to adopt a valid and reliable instrument for measuring utilization of lifespan optimization and control strategies in elderly populations. Optimization in Primary and Secondary Control Scale in older adults, including, reliability, validity, confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis was the purpose of this study.