Social resource theory suggests that social interaction can be conceived as resource transaction or exchange with behaviours falling within six fundamental resource categories (i.e. love, status, information, money, goods, and services) organised along two underlying dimensions: particularism–universalism and concreteness–abstractness. With the purpose of extending knowledge about quality of care, this study adopts a novel approach in that it describes and categorises care behaviours using social resource theory instead of using single instances of care behaviour. The categorisation is further used to predict client satisfaction in care services targeting older people. Daily interactions between care staff and older persons were observed in two different residential care facilities using a structured non-participant observation design. The data were analysed using principal component analysis, correlation, and regression analysis. The results confirmed the hypothesis that satisfaction with care services is predicted by resource transactions that are high on the underlying dimensions of particularism and abstractness. Thus, the resource categories of love and status (resource categories high on particularism and abstractness) were shown to be strong predictors of client satisfaction. The use of social resource theory is a novel and appropriate approach to examine person-centred care and satisfaction with care. Also, in addition to addressing potential problems in previous self-report studies on care staff behaviour, the observational technique was highly practical to this service area where dealing with clients not always able to provide feedback directly.

社会资源理论表明，社会互动可以被视为资源交易或行为交换，属于六个基本资源类别（即爱、地位、信息、金钱、商品和服务），这些资源类别按照两个基本维度组织：特殊性-普遍性和具体性-抽象性。为了扩展有关护理质量的知识，本研究采用了一种新颖的方法，即使用社会资源理论而不是使用单个护理行为实例来描述和分类护理行为。该分类进一步用于预测针对老年人的护理服务的客户满意度。使用结构化非参与观察设计在两个不同的住宿护理机构中观察护理人员和老年人之间的日常互动。使用主成分分析、相关性和回归分析对数据进行分析。结果证实了这样的假设：对护理服务的满意度是通过在特殊性和抽象性的潜在维度上高度重视的资源交易来预测的。因此，爱情和地位的资源类别（高度特殊性和抽象性的资源类别）被证明是客户满意度的强有力的预测因素。社会资源理论的使用是一种新颖且适当的方法来检查以人为本的护理和护理满意度。此外，除了解决之前关于护理人员行为的自我报告研究中的潜在问题之外，观察技术对于这个与客户打交道并不总是能够直接提供反馈的服务领域非常实用。