Surveys

NDWS collects annual surveys of community clinicians, and nursing home, assisted living, and home care staff. Staff surveys ask questions across a variety of domains, including demographics; education, training, and experience; employment status; dementia care knowledge, attitudes and practices; and worker outcomes.

The staff surveys also have an administrator survey that includes questions related to facility characteristics, resident characteristics, staffing, training, and care practices.

Surveys are nationally representative. There is also a longitudinal component, enabling analysis of changes in workforce characteristics, employment patterns, and clinical practice over time. Surveys are updated and deployed annually to include new survey items from researchers and stakeholder groups. 

Updated data will be released each year. Current funding supports annual surveys through 2028.

Wave 4 Survey Competition

As we prepare for Wave 4 data collection (launching in 2027), we are once again inviting input. 

We are seeking proposed survey questions for community-based clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) who care for people living with dementia.

Submissions should address one or more of the following priority areas: dementia care delivery for people in rural settings; palliative and end-of-life care in dementia; and/or use of telehealth in dementia care. We are especially interested in validated questions or items that have been used in other surveys.

Submit your ideas for new survey content for Wave 4 here by June 10.

Wave 3 Questionnaires

Wave 3 surveys are being fielded in 2026, including new respondents and follow-up surveys with previous respondents. Follow-up surveys will be posted soon.

Beginning in Wave 3, we are also conducting semi-structured interviews with a subset of survey respondents, which we will make publicly available along with the survey data. These qualitative data can be leveraged by researchers to yield additional insights not found in the structured survey data.

Community Clinician

Wave 3 Questionnaire

Wave 3 Sample Frame

 

Nursing Home

Wave 3 Questionnaires

Wave 3 Sample Frame

Assisted Living

Wave 3 Questionnaires

Home Care

Wave 3 Questionnaires

 

 

Crosswalks

Download the crosswalks to see the surveys at a glance. The crosswalks also include sources for questions adapted from other surveys. If no source is listed, the question was developed by the NDWS survey team. Follow-up surveys and crosswalks for the follow-up surveys will be posted soon.

Wave 2 Questionnaires and Sample Frame

Wave 2 Restricted Use Survey Files for the Community Clinician, Nursing Home, and Assisted Living surveys are now available. A limited data set from the Home Care survey will be released later this summer. Wave 2 Public Use Files will be released later this summer.

The Wave 2 NH and AL surveys feature a larger sample size of new participants and the first year of staff follow-ups.

Wave 2 surveys were fielded April through December 2025. 

Community Clinician

Wave 1 Final User Guide

While new organizations were recruited during Wave 2 for the Nursing Home, Assisted Living, and Home Care Surveys, the Community Clinician Survey continued recruitment from the original Wave 1 sample. The version 2 instrument posted above has three additional questions (items 70, 72, 73) added during the recruitment phase; otherwise it is identical to the original Wave 1 instrument. In addition, select respondents received a short-form version of the instrument, which is available here.

Nursing Home

Wave 2 Questionnaires

Wave 2 User Guide

 

Wave 2 Sample Frame

Assisted Living

Wave 2 Questionnaires

Wave 2 User Guide

Home Care

Wave 2 Questionnaires

The Home Care Independent Staff survey was designed as a pilot in Wave 2 for home care workers who don’t work for an agency. The sample came from a list of individual home care workers in Michigan. If this effort is successful, it may be expanded in future waves.

 

Crosswalks

Download the crosswalks to see the surveys at a glance. The crosswalks also include sources for questions adapted from other surveys. If no source is listed, the question was developed by the NDWS survey team.

In the Staff Survey Crosswalk, you will find tabs for baseline respondents completing the survey for the first time, reinterviews of Wave 1 respondents still in their job, and reinterviews of Wave 1 respondents no longer in their job. 

Wave 1 Questionnaires, Sample Frame, and User Guides

Wave 1 survey data are available now. See the data collection protocol, fielding period, sample size, and respondent rates. (PDF, 175 KB)↗  

Visit How to Access Data to learn more about the tiers of data available.

Note: The Wave 1 survey data release does not contain data from the Home Care Staff Survey. 

Community Clinician

Wave 1 Questionnaire

Wave 1 Sample Frame

Wave 1 Final User Guide

Nursing Home

Wave 1 Questionnaires

Wave 1 Sample Frame

Assisted Living

Wave 1 Questionnaires

Home Care

Wave 1 Questionnaires

 

Crosswalk: Download the Survey Source Crosswalk to see all seven surveys at a glance and how they compare. The crosswalk also includes sources for questions adapted from other surveys. If no source is listed, the question was developed by the NDWS survey team.