Appropriateness of the EQ-HWB for Use in Residential Aged Care: A Proxy Perspective

The EQ Health and Wellbeing (EQ-HWB) is a new generic quality-of-life measure for use in evaluating interventions in health, public health and social care. This study aimed to explore proxies’ views regarding the appropriateness of the EQ-HWB for measuring residents’ quality of life living in residential aged care facilities.

Qualitative think-aloud and semi-structured interviews were conducted with family members and aged care staff across three facilities in Melbourne, Australia. Proxies completed the 25-item EQ-HWB proxy version 2 (i.e. proxy-person perspective) whilst talking through the reasons for choosing their response. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A thematic analysis was used for data analysis.

The sample included 29 proxies; nine family members and 20 aged care staff. The first theme summarised proxies’ ability to proxy report residents’ health and well-being using the EQ-HWB, which highlighted challenges with adherence to the proxy perspective, proxies’ limited knowledge about residents, disagreement with residents’ self-evaluation and use of heuristics. The second theme reflected feedback on the suitability of the EQ-HWB for use in residential aged care. Although proxies perceived that the EQ-HWB covered important domains, there were concerns about ambiguity, inappropriate examples, double-barrelled items and perceived repetition. Suggestions were made to improve the response options, comprehensiveness, recall period, layout and instructions of the questionnaire.

While the EQ-HWB captures domains relevant to residential aged care, modifications to item wording and examples are necessary to improve its appropriateness. Use of the proxy-person perspective revealed some challenges that require further consideration.