Quality of Life

In 1998, a team at University of Minnesota headed by Rosalie A. Kane was awarded a 5-year contract from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called: Measures, Indicators, and Improvement of Quality of Life in Nursing Homes.  This led to a multi-faceted series of research activities that took place in 100 nursing homes in 6 states.

Goals of this work were:

1.      To develop and test self-report measures of quality of life in nursing homes, particularly those related to psychological and social well-being.

2.      To determine the correlates of self-reported quality of life, including effects of private rooms and physical environments.

3.      To consider ways to assess quality of life for those residents who cannot speak for themselves.

Quality of Life self-reported outcome measures in 11 related domains were developed and tested and are now available in long and short formats (the latter comprised on 53 items overall and 3 to 6 items per domain). Results are also available in multiple publications.