Search results for ‘Subject term:"older people"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 2 of 2
Quality of life: measures and meanings in social care research
- Author:
- BOWLING Ann
- Publisher:
- NIHR School for Social Care Research
- Publication year:
- 2014
- Pagination:
- 27
- Place of publication:
- London
This review provides an overview of the measurement of quality of life (QoL) in social care, or social care-related QoL. Because the field is wide, this overview focuses on older people. Outcome can be complex to measure in social care, because several types of outcomes of both the user and any family carers may be relevant; these may also be affected by multiple factors. Measuring quality of life is one of several components for assessing the effectiveness of interventions. Maintaining people’s broader quality of life is also a potentially important outcome to consider ensuring that the person can ‘live well’ and that their care and support up until their death meets their needs. In reflection of the wider goals and provision of social care, compared to health care, client-based outcome measures need to be more multidimensional than narrower health-related or disease- related QoL measures reflecting the impact of circumstances and interventions on users’ wider lives. However, given overall lack of agreement on concepts or measures of social care and QoL outcomes, investigators have tended to use separate measures of social involvement and/or life satisfaction as indicators of QoL as well as measures of morale, health status, anxiety/depression, physical functioning, and needs. There has been a heavy emphasis on health status, physical and mental functioning. There are also several technical issues to consider when choosing and administering a measure of QoL. These are described but are not intended to be daunting to the researcher. Few measures satisfy all psychometric criteria perfectly. This overview is intended to be an informative summary of the main steps involved in selecting and testing a measurement scale. (Edited publisher abstract)
Outcome of anxiety and depression at two and a half years after baseline interview: associations with changes in psychiatric morbidity among three samples of elderly people living at home
- Authors:
- BOWLING Ann, FARQUHAR Morag, GRUDY Emily
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 11(2), February 1996, pp.119-129.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Examines psychiatric morbidity, using the General Health Questionnaire, which detects mainly anxiety and depression. The results of the follow-up data show that the most significant predictor of changes in psychiatric morbidity at follow-up was baseline psychiatric status, followed by health status. The strength of the study is its longitudinal design and verification of the results in three samples of elderly people, including one very elderly group. The lack of consistent associations with recovery from psychiatric morbidity (eg depression) in the literature enhances the importance of studies which aim to identify factors associated with different outcomes.