| Although Francophones in Ontario represent the largest population of French-Canadians outside Quebec, little is known about this population, and especially about the older members of this ethno-linguisticgroup. The scarce literature reports that French-Canadians generally have lower service utilization, lower health status and are at risk of psychological distress compared with Anglo-Canadians. One could postulate that these disparities would be present to a greater extent in Ontario because Francophones are more of a minority. This thesis uses both bivariate statistics and multilevel linear modeling to examine differences between the linguistic groups using data from the Resident Assessment Instrument - Home Care (RAI-HC) collected from the year 2000 aspect of the Health Informatics Project in Ontario. This dataset includes 197 (3.5%) Francophones in a total of 4, 764 home care clients. The results of the bivariate analysis showed that there are differences between older Francophones and Anglophones regarding, socio-economic status, physical health and mental health. The findings of the multilevel linear modeling indicate the variables were all nested within the various communities. No significant differences existed regarding pain, Activities of Daily Living (ADL), service utilization and frailty. Significant differences were found regarding instrumental ADL, Methods for Assigning Priority Levels, Depression, Cognition and Communication in all cases Francophones tend to be more at risk for these health disparities in general, with an increased risk when residing in communities where they were in greater minority. The results also have relevance to the use of the RAI-HC as an assessment tool for minority linguistic groups. |
