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Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-mpp-10.1177_23814683211027902 for Do You Prefer Safety to Social Participation? Finnish Population-Based Preference Weights for the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT) for Service Users by Lien Nguyen, Hanna Jokimäki, Ismo Linnosmaa, Eirini-Christina Saloniki, Laurie Batchelder, Juliette Malley, Hui Lu, Peter Burge, Birgit Trukeschitz and Julien Forder in MDM Policy & Practice

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-esp-10.1177_0958928720974189 for Investigating factors influencing quality-of-life effects of home care services in Austria, England and Finland: A comparative analysis by Birgit Trukeschitz, Assma Hajji, Judith Kieninger, Juliette Malley, Ismo Linnosmaa and Julien Forder in Journal of European Social Policy

Over the last three decades, quality of life (QoL) has been advocated as an indicator of social care outcomes for adults with intellectual disabilities. In England, the Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS) is conducted annually by local authorities to contribute to the evidence base of the care-related QoL of people receiving publicly-funded adult social care. This study explores relationships between QoL and non-care related factors to identify relationships that could inform social care policy and practice. Cross-sectional data collected from 13,642 adults who participated in the 2011 and 2012 ASCS were analysed using regression to explore the factors associated with QoL measured using the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT). Self-rated health, rating of the suitability of home design and anxiety/depression were all found to be significantly associated with ASCOT. Other individual and survey completion factors were also found to have weak significant relationships with ASCOT. The models also indicate that there was an increase in overall ASCOT-QoL and in five of the eight ASCOT domains (Personal comfort and cleanliness, Safety, Social participation, Occupation and Dignity) between 2011 and 2012. These findings demonstrate the potential value of QoL data for informing policy for people with intellectual disabilities by identifying key factors associated with QoL, the characteristics of those at risk of lower QoL, and QoL domains that could be targeted for improvement over time. Future research should establish causal relationships and explore the risk-adjustment of scores to account for variation outside of the control of social care support.

This thesis is concerned with the statistical adjustment of survey-based indicators to account for unobserved and observed sources of heterogeneity. Recent years have seen a growth in the use of survey-based indicators to measure performance, but questions have been raised over their legitimacy due to high levels of nonresponse, particularly among certain groups, and the influence of factors unrelated to organisational performance, which complicate their interpretation. In light of this, this thesis uses a range of methods that go beyond those ordinarily applied to performance assessment, to explore the role that nonresponse and factors unrelated to performance, i.e. case-mix, have on indicators. The empirical analysis focuses on the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) indicators drawn from the English Adult Social Care Survey. The core concerns of this thesis are whether (i) nonresponse and (ii) adjusting for factors beyond the control of organisations affects the interpretation of indicator scores. Nonresponse has a limited effect on inferences about performance, but conclusions depend on the method used to explore the effects of nonresponse, the level of nonresponse, the importance of unobserved factors and the value placed on accuracy over intelligibility of indicators. Adjustment for case-mix has an important effect on the interpretation of indicators, but the adjustment method used was less critical for inference, at least where the aim is to compare organisations. This thesis suggests that the accuracy of some of the ASCOF indicators would be improved by adjusting for case-mix and, possibly, for nonresponse. It is important for future studies to explore the effect of nonresponse on indicators. Policymakers may also wish to consider amending the survey design to improve its representativeness of the adult social care population. Future studies of survey-based performance indicators would benefit from using a wider range of methods similar to those applied here.