NELS-National-Report-2023

Findings of the National End of Life Survey | 2023

Scores for the stages of care (scales) were constructed by calculating the average scores for all questions belonging to that stage.

Comparing groups

When is a di΍erence a ‘real’ di΍erence? Statistical tests were carried out to examine if there were signiȴcant di΍erences from the national average. A ‘z-test’ was used to compare care experience data at the 99% conȴdence level. A z-test is a statistical test used to examine whether two population mean scores are di΍erent when the variances are known and the sample size is large. A statistically signiȴcant di΍erence means it is very unlikely that results were obtained by chance alone if there was no real di΍erence. Therefore, when a score is ‘higher than’ or ‘lower than’ the national average, this is highly unlikely to have occurred by chance. Survey analysis and reporting The survey data was analysed by the National End of Life Survey team, part of the National Care Experience Programme based in the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). Quantitative survey data was analysed using the statistical package Stata 17. The responses to the open-ended questions were transcribed and anonymised. All references to dates, names, places and nationalities were removed from comments before they were thematically analysed and coded.

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