Developing a research agenda for assisted living

We describe an approach to identifying knowledge gaps, research questions, and methodological issues for assisted living (AL) research.

We undertook an inventory of AL literature and research in progress and commissioned background papers critiquing knowledge on selected subtopics. With an advisory committee, we identified a comprehensive list of researchable questions of potential utility to consumers, providers, and/or policy makers, which AL researchers then rated as to their importance. The preliminary work facilitated a structured working conference of AL researchers.

The top five priority topics identified as a result of the polling before the conference were consumer preferences, cost and financing, developing an information system for consumer decision making, developing quality measures, and resident outcomes. From conference discussion, conferees added other emphasis areas and refined the original ones. They flagged lack of standardized definitions and measures as barriers to building an empirically based AL literature. Conferees also identified distinctions between research on AL as a whole and research on interventions within AL.

In an emerging area in which the literature cannot yet support rigorous comparisons, meta-analysis, or consensus conferences, the systematic approaches, including assembling researchers who use widely different methods, generated substantial agreement on a research agenda.