Considerations for Survey Research in Assisted Living

In a recent research letter, Zimmerman et al,1 caution that survey data about assisted living (AL) residents may underestimate resident chronic conditions. They offer lack of knowledge or documentation of resident medical conditions in AL as a partial explanation, and use a national study2 that collects aggregate-level resident information as a case in point. Based on our extensive experience working with data from AL settings, we propose 4 additional explanations for errors and discrepancies involving these data.