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Personal Social Services Research Unit
Cornwallis Building
George Allen Wing
University of Kent
Canterbury
Kent
CT2 7NF
01227 824967
ascot@kent.ac.uk
www.pssru.ac.uk/ascot
updates
Version 2.0 of ASCOT contains a number of important updates.
Terminology
- Across all of the ASCOT tools and supporting documents, the term 'low-level needs' has been replaced with the term 'some needs'. Drawing on feedback from users of ASCOT, this change was made to clarify what was meant by the level. This level is designed to reflect where the service user experiences real needs in their everyday life, but this need is not so severe that that it is likely to have a negative impact upon the service user's health.
- Across all ASCOT tools and supporting documents, our abbreviation of social care-related quality of life has been changed from 'SCRQOL' to 'SCRQoL'.
- Across all ASCOT tools domain names have been standardised.
Scoring
- The preference weights in SCT4, INT4 and CH3 (not SCT3) have been altered in line with further work on both the preferences of the general population and service users. This further work found that there was very little in the way of difference between the preferences of service users compared to the general population. Therefore the preference weights still reflect general population preferences. However, the new weights are anchored to zero or the 'dead state'. In all earlier versions of ASCOT, the scores ran between 1.00 and 0.23. In version 2.0 of ASCOT (for SCT4, INT4 and CH3), the potential ASCOT scores run between 1.00 and -0.23 (in the case of CH3) and -0.17 (in the case of SCT4 and INT4). A score of 0.00 (either individually or aggregated) would indicate SCRQoL that is equivalent to death, and thus any negative score would therefore indicate SCRQoL so bad that it, following the preference expressed by the general population, should be considered to be a state worse than death. Further details on the preference weights and scoring more generally can be found here. Users of ASCOT who have already collected data can copy and paste their data from earlier versions of the data entry tools into the V2.0 data entry tools to get the new scores.
- A new document outlining how ASCOT scores are calculated has been added to the guidance section of the ASCOT website
Instruments
- Questions used in SCT4 and INT4 have been altered slightly to simplify and keep in line with the version of ASCOT being used in the National Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS) 2011. All the response options remain the same.
- The item on personal cleanliness and comfort was changed from "Thinking about your personal care, by which we mean being clean and presentable in appearance, which of the following statements best describes your situation?" to "Thinking about keeping clean and presentable in appearance, which of the following statements best describes your situation?". All the answer options remain the same.
- "and fear of being attacked or robbed" was removed from the definition included in the personal safety item.
- The last item measuring dignity was changed from "Thinking about the way you are helped and treated, and how that makes you think and feel about yourself, which of these statements best describes your situation?' to 'Which of these statements best describes how the way you are helped and treated makes you think and feel about yourself?. All the answer options remain the same.
- A revised interview schedule has been added to the tools for use in care homes (CH3)
- The guidance document which supports CH3 has been updated both following feedback from users of the care homes version of ASCOT and small changes to the research tools.
Additional facilities
- Across all ASCOT data entry tools, new charts and tables have been added to the ASCOT SUMMARY TABLES page to help users of ASCOT see SCRQoL in individual domains in addition to the overall scores.
- A forum has been added to the website. Here users and potential users of ASCOT can, once registered for the forum, interact with other people who have an interest in ASCOT. We envisage that it will be a space where people can ask questions about and share experiences of using ASCOT. Members of the ASCOT team will also be posting both new discussions and responding to questions.