[Scale development of free nursing home-adjustment for the elderly].
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to develop a scale of free nursing home adjustment for the elderly in Korea.


METHODS
The developmental processes were construction of a conceptual framework, development of preliminary items, verification of content validity, twice data gathering, verification of construct validity, and reliability of final items. The first 53 preliminary items were obtained through review of literatures about nursing home adjustment and in depth interviews with 5 staffs of nursing home. These items were reviewed by five specialists for content validity and 39 items were chosen. The first data was collected from 107 elderly residing in 3 nursing homes and the second survey was from 147 residents who were living in five nursing homes. Finally this data was analyzed for construct validity and reliability.


RESULTS
There were 23 final items which were sorted into 5 factors. The factors were identified as 'Relocation distress symptom'(8 items), 'Making friends'(4 items), 'Acceptance of new residence' (6 items), 'Difficulty in group life'(3 items), and 'Having self-worth'(2 items). The cumulative percent of variance was 53.466%. The reliability of the scale, Cronbach's alpha was .837.


CONCLUSIONS
The result of this study could be used for measuring nursing home adjustment of the elderly. However, for further validity and reliability, repeated researches are needed.
Lee
Ga Eon
GE
Department of Nursing, Dong-A University, 1, 3ga, Dongdaesin, Seogu, Busan 602-714, Korea. gelee@dau.ac.kr
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology*; D000369:Aged, 80 and over / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006707:Homes for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged / Q000523:psychology*; D009735:Nursing Homes; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires