Assessing the well-being of residents in nursing facilities Translation and validation of the German version of the Laurens Well-being Inventory for Gerontopsychiatry (LWIG-GER)

Purpose Well-adapted and validated well-being (WB) instruments for the nursing home population are scarce. To our knowledge, the Laurens Well-Being Inventory for Gerontopsychiatry (LWIG) is a practical and reliable well-being assessment tool that has never been validated for German nursing home populations. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to (1) translate and cross-culturally adapt the LWIG to a German context and (2) test the reliability and validity of the German LWIG in a group of older nursing home residents using the Rasch model. Methods This study has a cross-sectional, descriptive study design. Cross-cultural adaption of the LWIG-GER from English to German was performed according to a standardized method. The data obtained from 104 long-term nursing home residents (57 women, 47 men) aged 60-99 years (mean 79.5, standard deviation +/- 9.11) were analyzed for psychometric testing (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, item fit, McDonald's omega, convergent validity, and known-group validity, Rasch). Results The final LWIG-GER consists of 19 items with three subscales, including "psychological WB", "social WB", and "physical WB". The LWIG-GER showed good overall reliability with McDonald's omega of 0.83; the LWIG-GER dimensions' scores were significantly correlated with depression, functional performance, activities, fear of falling, and education. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the German language version of the LWIG is a reliable and valid tool for measuring WB in nursing home residents. Furthermore, we propose that the LWIG-GER questionnaire can broaden and deepen our understanding of residents' perception of quality of care and their environment.