Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Traditional long term care and assisted living represent two distinct care models with differing costs for the elderly who can no longer live independently. With increasing numbers of frail seniors needing supportive care given increasing life expectancy, it becomes important to understand how these two models affect quality of life, as well as the role of service quality in quality of life. We survey seniors and their families in long-term care and assisted living residences using Raphael et al’s (1995) Quality of Life Profile – Seniors Version. This instrument reflects a holistic quality of life definition incorporating health, functional, social, environmental, and psychological dimensions. Respondents also completed Linn and Linn’s (1984) self-evaluation of life function instrument, as well as questions capturing service quality and demographic information. We create a proxy for successful aging as a cumulative index of individual health capabilities, using Mejia et al’s (2017) proxy. Our proxy for service quality has the same dimensions as the Quality of Life Profile, and incorporates questions from existing resident satisfaction surveys. We find that on a univariate basis, respondents in assisted living generally report higher quality of life at each level of health capabilities. On a multivariate basis, controlling for age, gender, education and respondent type, the most important determinant of the quality of life proxy is service quality, followed by health resources then the care model. Results suggest that assisted living may represent a viable care model from a quality of life perspective even for residents with fewer health capabilities.