[Validation of the Home Care Quality Assessment Index (HCQAI)].

Aim: To confirm the convergent validity of the Home Care Quality Assessment Index (HCQAI), developed by Dr. Arai et al., which is used for overall assessment of home care in three areas: 1) conditions of the disabled elderly (outcome); 2) caregiver and caregiving situation (process); and 3) the home care environment (input), based on professional staff observation.

Methods: We surveyed 102 pairs of disabled elderly and their family caregivers who used the visiting nurse station of the Okazaki Medical Association were surveyed. The validity of HCQAI was investigated by computing the Spearman rank correlation coefficient between the subscales of the HCQAI and the variables measuring "outcome", "process" and "input", respectively. "Yokaigodo" (Government-Certified Disability Index), the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) of the disabled elderly, severity of dementia, the Short-Memory Questionnaire (SMQ) and Troublesome Behavior Scale (TBS) were used for the "outcome" variables."The impression of home care", a new scale developed for this study, was used as a variable to evaluate "process and input".

Results: The HCQAI subscales for "outcome" indicators were significantly correlated with the other above-described variables measuring "outcome", but not with "the impression of home care", the variable evaluating "process and input". All 5 HCQAI subscales for "process" and "input" were significantly correlated with "the impression of home care", but 4 out of 5 HCQAI subscales were not significantly correlated with the variables measuring "outcome".

Conclusion: These findings indicate that each subscale of the HCQAI has the expected properties. Therefore, the convergent validity of the HCQAI is confirmed.