Individualizing Care to Frail Elders: Refining the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory

Principal Investigator: Kimberly Van Haitsma
Period: February 2006 - January 2007
Funded by: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Abstract: This health research project focuses on aiding the assessment and integration of psychosocial preferences for everyday living for frail elderly individuals who receive long-term care services. Psychosocial preferences include such things as amount and type of social contact, lesisure activities, and daily routines. A small, growing body of literature highlights the positive impacts of integrating these preferences into care delivery for frail elders. The Preference for Everyday Living Inventory (PELI) is a rigorously develped assessment instrument fielded in a previous study of ver 500 randomly selected elderly home health care recipients. The current project seeks to expand this line of research through a series of secondary analyses with the goal of refining the amount of individual preference information provided to a caregiver.