Thriving in long-term care facilities: instrument development, correspondence between proxy and residents'...

To develop an instrument for measuring thriving among residents in long-term care facilities, to assess the correspondence between proxy ratings and self-report and the internal consistency of the Norwegian version.

The instrument was developed from the life-world concept of thriving and thereby has a different theoretical basis than existing 'dementia related' quality-of-life instruments. Thriving relates the experience of older persons to the place where they live. Proxy instruments need to be developed for residents in long-term care facilities who are not able to report their subjective experiences.

Instrument development using cross-sectional survey design.

The instrument was developed in three versions (resident, family and staff) from a theory on thriving. Forty-eight triads consisting of a resident, family member and primary nurse from 12 Norwegian nursing homes participated. Data collection took place between March-December 2011. Inter-rater agreement between the groups was assessed by Cohen's kappa coefficient (weighted). Internal consistency was evaluated by Cronbach's alpha. Homogeneity was explored through item-total correlations.

Agreement between residents, family members and staff was poor or fair (<0.41) in six of 38 items. These items were excluded. The 32-items instrument had satisfactory Cronbach's alpha values in each of the three samples and satisfactory homogeneity as item-total correlations was substantial without being excessive and thus indicated that items were measuring the same construct.

The instrument appears to have internal consistency and enable reliable proxy measures of the thriving construct. Further psychometric assessment including checking for possible item redundancy is needed.