Development of the CAHPS Nursing Home Resident Surveys
The Resident Surveys have been through the following development process:
Focus groups. In the early phase of development, CAHPS researchers conducted focus groups with nursing home residents and their family members. These groups provided the team with valuable information about what topics and measures were important to them. This information, combined with a literature review, helped the team develop initial sets of survey items.
Cognitive testing of survey questions. The next step in the development process was cognitive testing of the draft questionnaires with nursing home residents. Cognitive testing is a way to ensure that residents can understand and answer the questions as intended. The team cognitively tested the quality-of-care and quality-of-life items prior to testing the questionnaires in the field.
Field testing. In the summer of 2005, the CAHPS Team tested both the long-stay resident and discharged resident questionnaires with residents of 13 nursing homes located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut. They analyzed results from these test in the fall of that year, and published the Nursing Home CAHPS Field Test Report on January 19, 2006. This report describes the results of a field test that was conducted to learn more about
- How to identify samples of potential respondents;
- How to work with nursing homes to identify potential respondents;
- How best to conduct surveys of this population; and
- How the draft instrument of the survey performs.
The team revised the resident instruments based on the field test results and an additional round of cognitive testing.
Additional testing to develop composites and transition items. Under an AHRQ grant, the University of Pittsburgh has done additional testing on a national random sample of nursing homes.
Learn more:
- Castle N, Engberg J, Men A. Satisfaction of discharged nursing home residents. J Appl Gerontol 2016 July;[epub ahead of print].
- Sangl J, Buchanan J, Cosenza C, et al. The development of a CAHPS® instrument for nursing home residents (NHCAHPS). J Aging and Social Policy 2007;19(2):63-82.
