Improving Quality of Life for Older People in Long-Stay Care ...

A small number of private nursing homes listed had closed. There were alsodifferences between how facilities were categorised on the lists received from thehealth boards and how the facilities categorised themselves. Most discrepanciesoccurred where a facility categorised as voluntary in the list from the health boardcategorised itself as private. Also, some facilities listed as welfare homes in thehealth board data categorised themselves as public geriatric homes. There were,therefore, considerable difficulties in categorising facilities. Pragmatic decisionswere made in light of these discrepancies; lists were modified to ensureconsistency and some facilities were recategorised. In addition, a web search fornew facilities was also undertaken and new facilities added, where appropriate.4.4.1 Questionnaire Design84The questionnaire used in the survey was developed from that used in theO’Connor and Walsh (1986) study as one of the aims of this study was to allowsome comparison between the two studies. The survey instrument, therefore, hadto be broadly comparable to the instrument used in 1986. This prior study, however,only focused on the private and voluntary long-stay sector. Following a review ofthe literature and examination of data from focus groups, a number of changes tothe survey instrument were made to reflect changes in the health and social caresystem in the interim and the need for the questionnaire to be equally applicable topublic and private facilities (Appendix One). Questionnaires were coded accordingto type of facility, health board region and number of facilities in that region.4.4.2 Pilot SurveyPrior to the main survey, a pilot questionnaire was sent to thirty long-stay facilitiesacross the country (Table 4.2). The pilot sample was stratified to mirror thecharacteristics of the population as a whole using the following criteria:representation from the five categories of long-stay facilitiesinclusion of at least one facility in each category from each health board area(where possible)appropriate urban/rural mixthe total number of facilities used as pilot sites reflected the percentageof total long-stay beds in each of the categories.Improving Quality of Life for Older People in Long-Stay Care Settings in Ireland