Capabilities and quality of life in Dutch psycho-geriatric nursing homes: an exploratory study using a proxy version of the ICECAP-O

To validate the ICECAP-O capability measure in psycho-geriatric elderly in nursing homes, we compared the capability scores
of restrained and unrestrained clients. Both nursing staff and family were used as proxies for assessing clients’ capabilities.

For 122 psycho-geriatric elderly, a total of 96 nursing professionals and 68 family members completed a proxy questionnaire.
We investigated the convergent and discriminant validity of the ICECAP-O and measures of care dependency, health-related quality
of life, and overall quality of life. We also directly compared ICECAP-O scores of the 56 clients for whom both nursing staff
and family members had completed the questionnaire.

Convergent validity between ICECAP-O and care dependency, health-related, and overall quality of life measures could be established,
as well as discriminant validity for the restrained and unrestrained groups. Nursing and family proxy ICECAP-O tariffs were
not significantly correlated.

ICECAP-O measures a more general concept than health-related quality of life and can differentiate between restrained and
non-restrained psycho-geriatric clients. Since nurses seem to be able to assess the current quality of life of clients using
the ICECAP-O more precisely than the family proxies, for now the use of nursing proxies is recommended in a nursing home setting.