Growing competition among long-term care services is driving increased interest in customer satisfaction. Frailty may impose barriers to assessment resulting in the need to expand definitions of consumer to include those responsible for the placement of dependent elders into a variety of long-term care options. Past research generally considers only residents of long term care settings while ignoring the possibility that racial differences among responsible parties (RPs) may modify satisfaction with adult care homes. The 1994 Domiciliary Care Project in North Carolina provided data on the RPs of 357 elders residing in 147 adult care facilities in 20 counties. Satisfaction with the adult care facility was conceptualized as the outcome of the responsible parties' demographic characteristics, personal caregiving experiences, and characteristics of the home in which the elder resides. The model explained 31.2% of the overall variance (p=0.000). Organizational characteristics were highly predictive of satisfaction, less so for the caregiving experience and demographic characteristics. The modifying effects of race on care satisfaction were generally not significant, excluding a positive interaction with being White and depressed in the past month. Administrative qualities, rather than intrapersonal characteristics or the caregiving experience of the RP, play a pivotal role in shaping the perceptions of satisfaction with adult care homes. Overall, race does not appear to modify the perception of quality or satisfaction with residential care facilities. This suggests that once Whites and African Americans are faced with placing an elder into residential care, differences in their perceptions of the caregiving role subside.
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I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.