Developing a new quality of life instrument with older people for economic evaluation: findings from qualitative interviews with older people living in the community

Australia’s population is ageing with increasing pressure on aged care expenditures. Economic evaluation offers a systematic framework for promoting efficiency and maximising quality of life. However, this is currently no composite quality of life tool suitable for economic evaluation that incorporates the values of older people themselves. This project represents the first of a three-phased program of work funded via the ARC Linkage Program to address this gap. We adopt a bottom-up approach, using qualitative interviews with older people to develop a descriptive quality of life framework on which the new measurement tool will be based. Participants are community-dwelling people 65 years and over (n=40), receiving aged care services from five aged care partner organisations with coverage across five Australian states. Audio files were transcribed and imported into NVivo to support the analysis. Two researchers independently coded data using a thematic analysis approach. Data collection and analysis is in progress. We present emerging findings of the quality of life domains deemed most important to community-dwelling older people. Even though older people expect some degree of erosion in some domains, physical health, social networks, independence and keeping active emerged in stage 1 of the analysis as key domains for defining quality of life. Quality of life domains of importance to older people differ to those of younger adults. It is important that older people’s values are incorporated into quality of life measures for application in aged care.