Assessing social connection for long‐term care home residents: Systematic review using COnsensus‐based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments guidelines
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Social connection is important for long‐term care (LTC) residents' quality of life and care. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to measure it and this limits ability to find what improves and impairs social connection in LTC homes. We therefore aimed to systematically review and evaluate the measurement properties of existing measures of social connection for LTC residents, to identify which, if any, measures can be recommended. We searched eight electronic databases from inception to April 2022 for studies which reported on psychometric properties of a measure of any aspect(s) of social connection (including social networks, interaction, engagement, support, isolation, connectedness, and loneliness) for LTC residents. We used COnsensus‐based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) guidelines to evaluate the measurement properties reported for each identified measure and make recommendations. We identified 62 studies reporting on 38 measures; 21 measured quality of life, well‐being or life satisfaction and included a social connection subscale or standalone items and 17 measures specifically targeted social connection. We found there was little high‐quality evidence on psychometric properties such as sufficient content validity ( n = 0), structural validity ( n = 3), internal consistency ( n = 3), reliability ( n = 1), measurement error ( n = 0), construct validity ( n = 4), criterion validity ( n = 0) and responsiveness ( n = 0). No measures demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties on all these aspects, so none could be recommended for use. Thirty‐four measures have the potential to be recommended but require further research to assess their quality and the remaining four are not recommended for use. Our review therefore found that no existing measures have sufficient evidence to be recommended for assessment of social connection in residents of LTC homes. Further validation and reliability studies of existing instruments or the development of new measures are needed to enable accurate measurement of social connection in LTC residents for future observational and interventional studies. Highlights Social connection is fundamental to person‐centered care in long‐term care homes. There is insufficient evidence for the reliability and validity of existing measures. No current measures can be recommended for use based on existing evidence. A reliable and valid measure of social connection is needed for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.229 | 0.427 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.015 | 0.021 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.027 | 0.020 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".