Abstract
Objectives: Our prior study revealed that the speech duration of older people in long-term care facilities in Japan is four minutes in one day, owing to the lack of “life-worldly communications.” This study is a pilot study for the development and validation of the Life-Worldly Communication Scale (LWCS) that can efficiently measure the life-worldly communication duration of older people. Methods: The subjects were 65 individuals, 65 years of age or older, who were chosen among people living in long-term care facilities and in home care in Japan. The items of LWCS were generated from related literature. The content validity of LWCS was examined from the content validity ratio. Construct validity of LWCS was verified by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Convergent or discriminant validity was examined from the relation between LWCS and the life-worldly communication time or depression level. Reliability was examined by inspecting internal consistency and stability. Results: The LWCS proved satisfactory in the goodness-of-fit index (GFI = .92, NFI = .91, CFI = .99, RMSEA =.03) by confirmatory factor analysis. Convergent validity of LWCS was supported by a significant correlation between LWCS and the life-worldly communication time (r = .62, P <.001). Reliability of LWCS was confirmed by internal consistency (Cronbach’s α =. 90) and stability (test-retest, r =.70, p <. 01). Conclusions: The reliability and validity of the LWCS were confirmed in the study population. However, the number of items included in each factor was insufficient. Efforts to improve LWCS are needed in the future.
Highlights
Depression is one of the leading causes of disability, representing significant costs to individuals, families and society
While the symptoms of depression appeared to be associated with many negative health and social factors, residents with a diagnosis of depression were much more likely to receive antidepressant medications. These results highlight the importance of identifying seniors in residential care who may be suffering from depression
They underscore the value of the Continuing Care Reporting System (CCRS) and the RAI-MDS 2.0© assessment in identifying seniors who are at risk for poor outcomes
Summary
Depression is one of the leading causes of disability, representing significant costs to individuals, families and society. Diagnosis of depression in seniors varies according to care setting, with the lowest levels reported among people living in the community (1% to 5%) and the highest levels among those in long-term care facilities (14% to 42%).[3,4,5,6]. Another way of looking at depression is to document the presence of symptoms that may be indicative of depression. The pattern of symptom rates remains the same as that for the diagnosis of depression, with the lowest levels in the community (3% to 26%) and the highest levels in long-term care settings (7% to 49%).[3, 4, 6]
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