Quality of community-based day centre services for people with psychiatric disabilities: psychometric properties of the Quality in Psychiatric Care - Daily Activities (QPC-DA).

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The aim of the present study was to test the psychometric properties and dimensionality of the instrument Quality in Psychiatric Care - Daily Activities (QPC-DA) and to briefly describe the day centre attendees' perception of the quality at community-based day centre services.

METHODS

A sample of 218 attendees from 14 community-based day centre services in seven municipalities in Sweden participated in the study.

RESULTS

Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the QPC-DA consists of six dimensions and has a factor structure that to a large extent corresponds to that found in other studies of quality in psychiatric care settings, such as inpatient, outpatient, forensic inpatient, and housing support for people with psychiatric disabilities. The internal consistency of the factors was satisfactory and thus the QPC-DA showed adequate psychometric properties. The attendees' ratings of quality of community-based day centre services were generally high. The highest rating was for the encounter dimension and the lowest for the participation and the secluded environment dimensions, indicating areas for improvement.

CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The QPC-DA includes important aspects of the attendees' assessment of quality of community-based day centre services and offers a simple and inexpensive way to evaluate quality from their perspective.