Developing the Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ): A Measure of Family Involvement in the Lives of Residents at Long-Term Care Facilities

Author

Christopher Thomas Fast, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Abstract

Intro: One factor that has been shown to improve long-term care facility resident’s quality of life is family involvement (Gaugler, 2005). Despite this, the measures that currently exist to measure family involvement in the lives of older adults residing in longterm care facilities are rather simplistic, using visitation frequency as the prominent gauge of involvement and a situation specific fashion (Port et al., 2005). The purpose of this study was to design a measure of family involvement that could be used to gauge more aspects of family involvement than visitation alone and be useful in a variety of settings. Methods: Long-term facility staff where asked to assist in creating a 40-item questionnaire that used 4-point Likert scales to measure various aspects of family involvement. The finalized FIQ-LTC was distributed to the family members of older adults residing in long-term care facilities around the country. Results: A total of 410 participants responded. Researchers found that the FIQ-LTC was highly reliable (α = .965). Results also indicated that a significant correlation between distance and overall involvement (r = -.121, p = .015) was no longer significant (r = 0.17, p = 0.740) when the effect of a question asking the frequency of visitation was controlled for. Discussion: These results indicate that existing measures that use visitation frequency as the sole measure of involvement are insufficient. The newly developed FIQ-LTC can serve as a more complete measure of family involvement in more settings than typical measures.

Advisor

Daniel Houlihan

Committee Member

Daniel Sachau

Committee Member

Jeffrey Buchanan

Date of Degree

2017

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Recommended Citation

Fast, C. T. (2017). Developing the Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ): A Measure of Family Involvement in the Lives of Residents at Long-Term Care Facilities [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/685/

Creative Commons License

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