An Examination of Resident Abuse in Assisted Living Facilities

This research project will examine resident abuse in assisted living facilities (ALFs). Six categories of elder abuse will be examined (i.e., verbal, physical, material, psychological, medication, and sexual abuse). The project has three specific aims: (1) Examine resident abuse from family and staff reported by nurse aides in a nationally representative sample of ALFs; (2)Expand the scope of our understanding of resident abuse by including medication abuse in ALFs; and (3)Identify facility practices in ALFs that nurse aides and Directors of Nursing believe prevent or contribute to abuse of residents.
Data will be collected from 75 nurse aides in developing the questionnaire (using different formats such as interviews and focus groups); participation from 1,350 ALFs; resulting in approximately 5,000 surveys from nurse aides. Thus, participants will reflect facilities and care givers in residential care. This will include large and small facilities and facilities with for profit and not-for-profit ownership. Nurse aides will include diversity in age, gender, and race/ethnicity. The analyses will focus on several key areas: 1. data representativeness, 2. Instrument psychometrics, 3. item responses, and, 4. identification of facility practices that may prevent or contribute to resident abuse. A content analysis approach with the open ended questions will be used that allows for systematic extraction of themes (giving information on how to prevent abuse). ca/ncf