The Affordability of Long-Term Care and Support Services: Findings from a KFF Survey

The KFF Survey on Affordability of Long-term Care and Support Service was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the KFF. The survey was conducted May 5^th-14^th, 2022 online and by telephone among a nationally representative sample of 1,573 U.S. adults, in English (1,502) and in Spanish (71). The sample includes 1,422 adults reached through the SSRS Opinion Panel online. The SSRS Opinion Panel is a nationally representative probability-based panel where panel members are recruited randomly in one of two ways: (a) Through invitations mailed to respondents randomly sampled from an Address-Based Sample (ABS) provided by Marketing Systems Groups (MSG) through the U.S. Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence (CDS); (b) from a dual-frame random digit dial (RDD) sample provided by MSG. For the online panel component, invitations were sent to panel members by email followed by up to four reminder emails. An additional 151 interviews were conducted by telephone with respondents who previously interviewed as part of the SSRS RDD Omnibus poll and indicated they do not access the internet. Web-panelists received a modest incentive for participation in the form of an electronic gift card for the SSRS Opinion Panel. For the callback sample, a $10 incentive was offered to all respondents.

A series of data quality checks were run on the final data. This included a review of the following: all grids straight-lined (i.e., providing the same response to every item in a grid); cases with more than 25% question non-response; cases with a length less than one third of the mean length from respondents who experienced long term care or had a loved one who received long-term care; and open-ended responses that were unintelligible, nonsensical, or seemed suspicious. Based on this criterion, 7 cases were removed.

The combined telephone and online panel samples were weighted to match the sample’s demographics to the national U.S. adult population using data from the Census Bureau’s 2021 Current Population Survey (CPS). Weighting parameters included gender by age, gender by education, age by education, race by education, race by age, race by gender, detailed race/ethnicity, detailed education, census region, internet frequency, population density and party ID. The gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, and census region benchmarks were derived from 2021 Current Population Survey (CPS) data. The population density came from Census Planning Database 2020. The internet frequency and party ID were derived from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) for Pew Research Center – May 29 to Aug 25, 2021. The weights take into account differences in the probability of selection for each sample type (SSRS Probability Panel or via the callback sample). For the SSRS Probability Panel, this includes adjustment for within household probability of selection and the design of the panel recruitment procedure. For the callback sample, this includes propensity for nonresponse.

The margin of sampling error including the design effect for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Numbers of respondents and margins of sampling error for key subgroups are shown in the table below. For results based on other subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher. Sample sizes and margins of sampling error for other subgroups are available by request. Sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error and there may be other unmeasured error in this or any other public opinion poll. KFF public opinion and survey research is a charter member of the Transparency Initiative of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.