IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v375y2025ics0277953625004198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measurement invariance and differential item functioning of a care staff proxy measure of nursing home resident dementia-specific quality of life (DEMQOL-CH): do care aides' first language, and care aides' and residents’ ethno-cultural background matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Hoben, Matthias
  • Kilmen, Sevilay
  • Keefe, Janice
  • O'Rourke, Hannah M.
  • Banerjee, Sube
  • Estabrooks, Carole A.

Abstract

Quality of life (QoL) is a priority goal of dementia care, but measuring QoL becomes increasingly difficult as a person's ability to self-report declines. QoL measurement is particularly challenging among Nursing home (NH) residents, due to their often advanced cognitive impairment. The DEMQOL-CH is a validated tool to assess NH residents' QoL, using care staff proxy reports. Care staff and residents often have diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds, which may affect the measurement of QoL. Our objective was to assess measurement invariance and differential item functioning (DIF) of the DEMQOL-CH based on care staff ethno-cultural background, language, and resident ethno-cultural background. In a convenience sample of 9 NHs in the Canadian province of Alberta, research assistants conducted structured interviews with 119 care staff between July and September 2021 to complete DEMQOL-CH assessments of 612 residents. We performed confirmatory factor analyses, multiple group item response theory analyses, and DIF analyses. Measurement of the overall DEMQOL-CH score was affected by care staff ethno-cultural background and language (lack of scalar measurement invariance), but not by resident ethno-cultural background. Six of the 31 DEMQOL-CH items had DIF based on both, care staff ethno-cultural background and language, 2 items had DIF based on care staff ethno-cultural background, 4 items had DIF based on care staff language. Resident ethno-cultural background did not lead to DIF. The lack of measurement invariance and the presence of DIF affects the comparability of DEMQOL-CH assessments collected from care staff with diverse ethno-cultural and/or language backgrounds. However, the extent of the issues identified is small and the tool's other psychometric properties are robust. Therefore, we suggest that it is reasonable to continue to use the DEMQOL-CH in its current form, with careful consideration of methods to deal with and adjust for measurement invariance.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoben, Matthias & Kilmen, Sevilay & Keefe, Janice & O'Rourke, Hannah M. & Banerjee, Sube & Estabrooks, Carole A., 2025. "Measurement invariance and differential item functioning of a care staff proxy measure of nursing home resident dementia-specific quality of life (DEMQOL-CH): do care aides' first language, and care a," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 375(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:375:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625004198
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118089
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953625004198
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118089?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geoff Masters, 1982. "A rasch model for partial credit scoring," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 149-174, June.
    2. William Meredith, 1993. "Measurement invariance, factor analysis and factorial invariance," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 525-543, December.
    3. Henrike Galenkamp & Karien Stronks & Lidwine B Mokkink & Eske M Derks, 2018. "Measurement invariance of the SF-12 among different demographic groups: The HELIUS study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(9), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Chalmers, R. Philip, 2012. "mirt: A Multidimensional Item Response Theory Package for the R Environment," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 48(i06).
    5. Stephanie A. Chamberlain & Wendy Duggleby & Janet Fast & Pamela B. Teaster & Carole A. Estabrooks, 2019. "Incapacitated and Alone: Prevalence of Unbefriended Residents in Alberta Long-Term Care Homes," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(4), pages 21582440198, October.
    6. Rosseel, Yves, 2012. "lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 48(i02).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura Maldonado-Murciano & Halley M. Pontes & Mark D. Griffiths & Maite Barrios & Juana Gómez-Benito & Georgina Guilera, 2020. "The Spanish Version of the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form (IGDS9-SF): Further Examination Using Item Response Theory," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Marius Leckelt & Eunike Wetzel & Tanja M. Gerlach & Robert A. Ackerman & Joshua D. Miller & William J. Chopik & Lars Penke & Katharina Geukes & Albrecht C. P. Küfner & Roos Hutteman & David Richter & , 2016. "Validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire Short Scale (NARQ-S) in Convenience and Representative Samples," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 884, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. César Merino-Soto & Gina Chávez-Ventura & Verónica López-Fernández & Guillermo M. Chans & Filiberto Toledano-Toledano, 2022. "Learning Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-L): Psychometric and Measurement Invariance Evidence in Peruvian Undergraduate Students," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-17, September.
    4. Luo, Nanyu & Ji, Feng & Han, Yuting & He, Jinbo & Zhang, Xiaoya, 2024. "Fitting item response theory models using deep learning computational frameworks," OSF Preprints tjxab, Center for Open Science.
    5. Carlos Miguel Lemos & Ross Joseph Gore & Ivan Puga-Gonzalez & F LeRon Shults, 2019. "Dimensionality and factorial invariance of religiosity among Christians and the religiously unaffiliated: A cross-cultural analysis based on the International Social Survey Programme," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-36, May.
    6. Cromwell, Johnathan R. & Harvey, Jean-François, 2025. "A problem half-solved is a problem well-stated: Increasing the rate of innovation through team problem discovery," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(3).
    7. Joakim Wallmark & James O. Ramsay & Juan Li & Marie Wiberg, 2024. "Analyzing Polytomous Test Data: A Comparison Between an Information-Based IRT Model and the Generalized Partial Credit Model," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 49(5), pages 753-779, October.
    8. Sanny D Afable & Grace T Cruz & Yasuhiko Saito, 2023. "Sex differences in the psychometric properties of the Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression (CES-D) Scale in older Filipinos," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(6), pages 1-14, June.
    9. Minjeong Jeon & Frank Rijmen & Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, 2013. "Modeling Differential Item Functioning Using a Generalization of the Multiple-Group Bifactor Model," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 38(1), pages 32-60, February.
    10. Teague R. Henry & Lindley R. Slipetz & Ami Falk & Jiaxing Qiu & Meng Chen, 2024. "Ordinal Outcome State-Space Models for Intensive Longitudinal Data," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 89(4), pages 1203-1229, December.
    11. repec:plo:pone00:0239421 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Yaël Drunen & Bram Spruyt & Filip Droogenbroeck, 2021. "The Salience of Perceived Societal Conflict in Europe: A 27 Country Study on the Development of a Measure for Generalized Conflict Thinking," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 595-635, December.
    13. Shenghai Dai & Dubravka Svetina & Xiaolin Wang, 2017. "Reporting Subscores Using R: A Software Review," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 42(5), pages 617-638, October.
    14. Dylan Molenaar, 2015. "Heteroscedastic Latent Trait Models for Dichotomous Data," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 80(3), pages 625-644, September.
    15. Francisco José Eiroa-Orosa & Laura Limiñana-Bravo, 2019. "An Instrument to Measure Mental Health Professionals’ Beliefs and Attitudes towards Service Users’ Rights," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-16, January.
    16. Sebastián Fierro-Suero & Bartolomé J. Almagro & Pedro Sáenz-López & José Carmona-Márquez, 2020. "Perceived Novelty Support and Psychological Needs Satisfaction in Physical Education," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(11), pages 1-14, June.
    17. repec:osf:osfxxx:tjxab_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Benjamin D. Schalet & Sangdon Lim & David Cella & Seung W. Choi, 2021. "Linking Scores with Patient-Reported Health Outcome Instruments:A VALIDATION STUDY AND COMPARISON OF THREE LINKING METHODS," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 86(3), pages 717-746, September.
    19. Thiago Medeiros Cavalcanti & Gabriel Lins Holanda Coelho & Alessandro Teixeira Rezende & Katia Correa Vione & Valdiney Veloso Gouveia, 2019. "Decisional and Emotional Forgiveness Scales: Psychometric Validity and Correlates with Personality and Vengeance," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(5), pages 1247-1264, November.
    20. Alexander Robitzsch, 2023. "Modeling Model Misspecification in Structural Equation Models," Stats, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-17, June.
    21. Rikkert M. van der Lans & Ridwan Maulana & Michelle Helms-Lorenz & Carmen-María Fernández-García & Seyeoung Chun & Thelma de Jager & Yulia Irnidayanti & Mercedes Inda-Caro & Okhwa Lee & Thys Coetze, 2021. "Student Perceptions of Teaching Quality in Five Countries: A Partial Credit Model Approach to Assess Measurement Invariance," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, August.
    22. Minjeong Jeon & Paul Boeck & Jevan Luo & Xiangrui Li & Zhong-Lin Lu, 2021. "Modeling Within-Item Dependencies in Parallel Data on Test Responses and Brain Activation," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 86(1), pages 239-271, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:375:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625004198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.