A review of satisfaction instruments used in long-term care settings.

We review studies in the published literature using satisfaction surveys in long-term care settings. These settings include nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospital long-term care units, and residential care homes. Rather than simply describe instruments in existence, we compare and contrast the format, content, and administration of these instruments. We identified 50 studies that have either developed or used satisfaction instruments in long-term care facilities. However, we also show that satisfaction instruments in the published literature vary greatly in numerous ways, including the number of questions they contain, the number of respondents included in the study, assessment of psychometric properties, and in the number of domains used.