Quality of Life Scores for Nursing Home Residents are Stable Over Time: Evidence from Minnesota

ABSTRACT

Quality of life (QoL) is important to nursing home (NH) residents, yet QoL is only publicly reported in a few states, in part because of concerns regarding measure stability. This study used QoL data from Minnesota, one of the few states that collects the measures, to test the stability of QoL over time. To do so, we assessed responses from two resident cohorts who were surveyed in subsequent years (2012–2013 and 2014–2015). Stability was measured using intra-class correlation (ICC) obtained from hierarchical linear models. Overall QoL had ICCs of 0.604 and 0.614, respectively. Our findings show that person-reported QoL has adequate stability over a period of one year. Findings have implications for higher adoption of person-reported QoL measure in long-term care.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality of life
• longitudinal
• nursing homes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health-National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (Grant No. R05MD010729) with TPS as PI.