From the ground up: assessing the face validity of the Quality of Life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC) measure with older Australians

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the face validity to inform content validity of the Quality of Life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC), a new measure for quality assessment and economic evaluation in aged care. 

Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with older adults (66–100 years) receiving aged care services at home (n = 31) and in residential care (n = 28). Participants provided feedback on draft items to take forward to the next stage of psychometric assessment. Items were removed according to several decision criteria: ambiguity, sensitive wording, not easy to answer and/or least preferred by participants. 

Findings: The initial candidate set was reduced from 34 items to 15 items to include in the next stage of the QOL-ACC development alongside the preferred response category. The reduced set reflected the views of older adults, increasing the measure’s acceptability, reliability and relevance. 

Originality/value: Quality of life is a key person-centred quality indicator recommended by the recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Responding to this policy reform objective, this study documents a key stage in the development of the QOL-ACC measure, a new measure designed to assess aged care specific quality of life.