Online Program

Can the distribution of long term care resident characteristics be estimated with establishment-level information?

Keywords: national estimates, validity, response burden, costs

NCHS has historically used a two-staged design for its long-term care (LTC) surveys, sampling facilities and then residents within facilities. Information on facilities is collected via a facility questionnaire (FQ) and information on residents via a resident questionnaire (RQ). Both FQs and RQs have been completed via in-person interviews. The FQ and RQ data are then weighted to estimate national distributions of facility and resident characteristics, respectively. NCHS’ 2010 National Survey of Residential Care Facilities (NSRCF) used this approach. The FQ had questions about the distribution of residents in a facility (e.g., percent of a facility’s residents with activity limitations) in addition to the RQ including questions about an individual resident (e.g., whether sampled resident had activity limitations). To lower costs and reduce response burden in its LTC surveys, NCHS is replacing in-person FQs and RQs with FQs completed mainly by mail We use responses to demographic and functional questions in the NSRCF’s FQ and RQ to examine the validity of the FQ data to produce national estimates of the distribution of resident characteristics.