Table 3.

Methodological characteristics of RAI-HC quality indicator sets (AIRE instrument)

	interRAI’s 1st generation QI set [37]	Swiss RAI-HC QI set [29]	interRAI’s 2nd generation QI set [30]
Domain 1: Purpose, relevance and organizational context	60%	60%	47%
The purpose of the indicator is described clearly	4	4	3.5
The criteria for selecting the topic of the indicator are described in detail	2.5	4	3
The organizational context of the indicator is described in detail	4	3.5	2
The quality domain the indicator addresses is described in detail	2.5	1.5	2.5
The health-care process covered by the indicator is described and defined in detail	1	1	1
Domain 2: Stakeholder Involvement	44%	28%	56%
The group developing the indicator includes individuals from relevant professional groups	3.5	2.5	4
Considering the purpose of the indicator, all relevant stakeholders have been involved at some stage of the development process	2.5	2	3
The indicator has been formally endorsed	1	1	1
Domain 3: Scientific evidence	11%	0%	0%
Systematic methods were used to search for scientific evidence	1.5	1	1
The indicator is based on recommendations from an evidence-based guideline	1.5	1	1
The supporting evidence has been critically appraised	1	1	1
Domain 4: Additional evidence, formulation and usage	69%	48%	54%
The numerator and denominator are described in detail	4	4	4
The target patient population of the indicator is defined clearly	4	2	2
A strategy for risk adjustment has been considered and described	4	1	4
The indicator measures what it is intended to measure (validity)	2.5	2.5	2.5
The indicator measures accurately and consistently (reliability)	1	3.5	1
The indicator has sufficient discriminative power	3.5	3	3.5
The indicator has been piloted in practice	1	1	1
The efforts needed for data collection have been considered	4	4	4
Specific instructions for presenting and interpreting the indicator results are provided	3.5	1	1.5

Abbreviations: AIRE Appraisal of Indicators through Research and Evaluation_;QI Quality indicator

Item scores: Each item score ranges from 1 to 4 with 1 = strongly disagree (confident that the criterion has not been fulfilled or no information was available), 2 and 3 = disagree/agree (unsure whether the criterion has been fulfilled) and 4 = strongly agree (confident that the criterion has been fulfilled) [33]

Domain score calculation: Domain scores for the four AIRE instrument domains were calculated as follows: first, the two authors’ scores per item were summed up and divided by two to obtain an average rating per item; second, the average item scores were summed up per domain to obtain the domain score; and third, the domain score were standardized using the following formula: (total score per domain - minimum possible score) / (maximum possible score - minimum possible score) × 100%

High methodological quality of QI set: If score ≥ 50% across all four AIRE instrument domains