Quality of informal care is multidimensional

Abstract

Purpose: To demonstrate that assessing quality of informal care involves more than merely determining whether care recipient needs for assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) are routinely satisfied. We investigated the extent to which potentially harmful behavior (PHB), adequate care, and exemplary care (EC) are empirically distinct dimensions of quality of care.

Design: 237 care recipients completed the quality of care measures, and their caregivers completed psychosocial measures of their own depression, life events, cognitive status, and perceptions of pre-illness relationship quality.

Results: Although PHB was moderately related to EC, adequate care was not associated with PHB and was only slightly related to EC. Psychosocial variables were not related to adequate care but were differentially associated with PHB and EC, providing additional evidence for the distinction between these measures of quality of care.

Conclusions: ADL assistance can be adequate in the presence of PHB and/or the absence of EC. Declines in EC may signal increases in PHB, independent of adequacy of care. These findings produce a brief, portable, and more comprehensive instrument for assessing quality of informal care.