The Research, Our Questions, Comments on Results

At the end of January 2007 I posed several questions for fellow travelers I'm in contact with by email. Twenty five responded and almost all gave multiple responses, which added up to eighteen pages of ten font single spaced data.

The questions were about how persons manage their challenges and what they do to enrich their lives. The results show clearly that our fellow travelers are quite eloquent on these issues.

This led to commissioning a thorough review of existing studies of life enriching activities. Results of this literature review turned out to be more important than we had imagined and will be published in proper research style.

This research was done in proper scholarly style so that we could look at unbiased results for answers to three questions:

1 What do we know about means for enriching lives of persons having memory blues?

2 Can these means be helpful to these persons living at home?

3 Can information technologies be used to help implement these means for these persons living at home?

Here I and others will comment on what these research results tell us about our three questions.

The alphabetical list of references is posted. As I post annotated results in six categories, I and others will post more comments. Comments are welcome from anyone reading this blog.

The six categories for annotated results are:
1 - Music
2 - Visual Arts
3 - Drama
4 - Dance & Movement
5 - Mixed & Miscellaneous
6 - Other Activities

We learned very little about the second and third of our questions above. About the first question we learned that what we know is mainly suggestive.

Our review thus turns to identification of improvements needed to answer our questions and address issues giving rise to our questions.

Key empirical improvements needed are:

1 more adequate specifications of study design, more adequate specifications of activities, and more adequate specifications of methods;

2 more adequate measurement tools;

3 more adequate use of life enrichment measures rather than clinical outcomes; and

5 more adequate systematic analysis of data.

Key substantive improvements needed are:

1 more direct testimony by persons living with challenges;

2 more focus on life enriching values of process rather than than clinical outcome products;

3 more inclusion of persons with early stage challenges; and

4 more attention to persons living at home (most studies are in skilled care facilities).

When the literature review is published it will include a major section on designing studies which can better answer our questions and a major section on designing studies so that the results are more reliable for addressing issues giving rise to our questions.