The Gerontologist, Vol 34, Issue 4 476-480, Copyright © 1994 by The Gerontological Society of America
A data perspective on long-term care
K Liu
Urban Institute, Washington, DC 20037.
Continuing progress in developing empirical information on different facets
of long-term care service use has been possible because of improvements in
the design of data sets. New generations of data sets are being developed
with a recognition of the inherent nature of long- term care. Notably,
long-term care implies care received over an extended period of time,
thereby presenting numerous occasions for changes in the characteristics of
both the services that are used and the recipients of the services. In
large part, the design of the data sets has been made in response to
research and policy interests in long- term care. This article highlights
some observations about progress in the development of long-term care data,
and the relationship between policy questions in long-term care and the
design of relevant data sets.
