Quality-of-life Assessment
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A COMMON CONSUMER SURVEY
Every year Nursing Facility A sends questionnaires to its residents' family representatives, asking them to respond, on behalf of their loved ones, to a series of satisfaction questions: How satisfied is your resident with the food here? With the social activities offered? With the staff? With the care they receive? The responses received back are stunning: Almost everyone-at least eight of ten respondents-reports high levels of satisfaction with each and every item on the questionnaire. Sound too good to be true? It probably is, especially considering that facility A, like an estimated 90% of all nursing homes in the nation, has too few workers to provide proper care to residents.
But if Facility A's actual quality of service does not deserve such high ratings, then what accounts for them? The questionnaire's design-one commonly used by nursing homes-and in particular its choice of respondents and its reliance on direct satisfaction questions. Let's take a look at how these design features influence responses.
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