The impact of nursing home residents' characteristics on ratings of importance of autonomy preferences in daily care over time.

Objective: Nursing home (NH) residents' preferences for everyday living are the foundation for delivering individualized care. Yet, work has not examined the impact of demographic and clinical characteristics of NH residents on the stability of their preferences over time.Method: This study examined the rate of change in reports of importance of 27 autonomy-related everyday preferences from the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory over 3-months and the demographic and clinical characteristics associated with change for nursing home residents (N = 255). Descriptive frequencies and tests of mean difference were utilized to examine differences between individuals reporting change in importance over time compared to those that did not report change.Results: Autonomy preferences in daily care remained stable over 3-months for the majority of residents. For residents that did report change on autonomy preferences, no systematic associations of demographic or clinical characteristics were found to be associated with change. Rather, change was associated with differential characteristics based on the preference.Conclusion: This study indicates that knowing a person's demographic or clinical characteristics in care will not uniformly inform a caretaker's understanding of the individual's reports of importance for autonomy related preferences over time. Future work should explore the role of care environment on change in preference ratings over time.