Paper
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
The Development of an Instrument to Measure the Adaptation of Elders Moving Into an Assisted Living Facility
Jeanne Siegel, MSN, ARNP, BC1, Maureen Fitzpatrick, MSN, ARNP2, Lucie Dlugasch, ARNP-BC, MSN3, Tina J. Shapiro, MSN, ARNP4, Catherina Chang, RN, MSN5, Sandra Brown, ARNP, MSN, NP-C6, and Rosemary Hall, PhD, RN1. (1) Nursing, University of Maimi School of Nursing, Coral Gables, FL, USA, (2) Department of Anesthesiology, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA, (3) Open Door Health Center, Homestead, FL, USA, (4) Department of Pediatric Surgery, Miami Children's Hospital, Miami, FL, USA, (5) Pain Center, University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL, USA, (6) Associated Medical Managers, Miami, FL, USA
| Learning Objective #1: Outline the steps of instrument development |
| Learning Objective #2: Develop an instrument using the steps outlined |
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS, 2003) estimates that by 2030 at least 71.5 million individuals will be over the age of 65 years. As individuals age, they often experience chronic illness, disability, isolation and cognitive impairment. As a result, individuals choose to move into assisted living facilities (ALF). The gap of knowledge on how individuals adapt to assisted living and the absence of instruments to measure this phenomenon prompted six doctoral level nursing students to develop a psychometric instrument. The instrument development methodology proposed by Nunnally (1994) and DeVellis (2003) guided the students to develop an instrument to measure the psychosocial, physical, and environmental factors of adapting to living in an ALF. Therefore, the purpose of this presentation is to outline the steps taken to develop the instrument. The steps include analysis of qualitative data from informant interviews of elders living in three ALF's, generation of items, determination of appropriate measurement format, construction of a 65-item Likert scale that reflected the daily life as told by the residents, review of the items by experts for content validity, reconstruction of the 65-item scale to 50 items, and selection of the statistical methodology to test the instrument's reliability and validity. The development of this instrument is the beginning step in the construction of an instrument that can be validated and used to identify factors affecting adaptation to living in an ALF.