Monash University Health Economics Group, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, 553 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, VIC, 3004, Australia.
National Ageing Research Institute, Parkville, VIC, Australia.
Patient. 2024 Nov;17(6):673-683. doi: 10.1007/s40271-024-00715-5. Epub 2024 Sep 5.
The EQ Health and Wellbeing (EQ-HWB) is a new generic quality-of-life measure for use in evaluating interventions in health, public health and social care. This study aimed to explore proxies' views regarding the appropriateness of the EQ-HWB for measuring residents' quality of life living in residential aged care facilities.
Qualitative think-aloud and semi-structured interviews were conducted with family members and aged care staff across three facilities in Melbourne, Australia. Proxies completed the 25-item EQ-HWB proxy version 2 (i.e. proxy-person perspective) whilst talking through the reasons for choosing their response. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A thematic analysis was used for data analysis.
The sample included 29 proxies; nine family members and 20 aged care staff. The first theme summarised proxies' ability to proxy report residents' health and well-being using the EQ-HWB, which highlighted challenges with adherence to the proxy perspective, proxies' limited knowledge about residents, disagreement with residents' self-evaluation and use of heuristics. The second theme reflected feedback on the suitability of the EQ-HWB for use in residential aged care. Although proxies perceived that the EQ-HWB covered important domains, there were concerns about ambiguity, inappropriate examples, double-barrelled items and perceived repetition. Suggestions were made to improve the response options, comprehensiveness, recall period, layout and instructions of the questionnaire.
While the EQ-HWB captures domains relevant to residential aged care, modifications to item wording and examples are necessary to improve its appropriateness. Use of the proxy-person perspective revealed some challenges that require further consideration.
EQ 健康和幸福感（EQ-HWB）是一种新的通用生活质量衡量标准，可用于评估健康、公共卫生和社会关怀领域的干预措施。本研究旨在探讨代理人对 EQ-HWB 用于衡量居住在养老院居民生活质量的适宜性的看法。
在澳大利亚墨尔本的三个设施中，对家庭成员和养老院工作人员进行了出声思维和半结构化访谈。代理人在回答问题时，通过对回答原因进行思考，完成了 25 项 EQ-HWB 代理版 2（即代理人视角）。所有访谈均进行了录音，并逐字记录。采用主题分析法进行数据分析。
样本包括 29 名代理人，其中 9 名家庭成员和 20 名养老院工作人员。第一个主题总结了代理人使用 EQ-HWB 代理报告居民健康和幸福感的能力，突出了遵守代理人视角、代理人对居民了解有限、与居民自我评估不一致以及使用启发式的挑战。第二个主题反映了对 EQ-HWB 用于养老院的适宜性的反馈。尽管代理人认为 EQ-HWB 涵盖了重要领域，但他们对模糊性、不适当的例子、双重标准项目和感知的重复表示关注。提出了一些改进建议，包括改善应答选项、全面性、回忆期、问卷布局和说明。
虽然 EQ-HWB 涵盖了与养老院相关的重要领域，但需要对项目措辞和例子进行修改，以提高其适宜性。使用代理人视角揭示了一些需要进一步考虑的挑战。
