Exploring participation in everyday life activities outside home for older adults with mild to moderate stage dementia

While older adults with dementia stay longer at home than in previous decades, there is a need to better understand how they are accessing outside places in public space and how it influences their quality of life. Having... [ view full abstract ]

While older adults with dementia stay longer at home than in previous decades, there is a need to better understand how they are accessing outside places in public space and how it influences their quality of life. Having access and occupations like grocery shopping, walking the dog or playing bingo for example, provides benefits such as supporting social participation and maintaining physical, social and cognitive skills. However getting out also implies challenges and risks such as finding one's way, being embarrassed or being stressed by the traffic. A knowledge gap exists about patterns of access to activities and places in various contexts for people with dementia and in our understanding of the importance of participation outside home.
Methods
A Swiss part of an international study using mixed methods will collect quantitative data using questionnaires like the Places and Activities Outside Home (ACT-OUT), Occupational Gap (OGQ) and MoCA, with 35 persons with dementia and 35 persons as controls. Fifteen persons will be selected from the first group to collect qualitative data using in-depth interviews. For the quantitative part, data analysis will be descriptive and explore contextual determinants. For the qualitative part, analysis will use constant comparisons based on a grounded theory approach. A Rasch analysis will be performed to prepare ACT-OUT-data for statistical analyses.
Results
The expected outcome is new knowledge about important places and parameters that hinder or facilitate persons with dementia going to their important places and performing occupations.
In June 2016, we will have preliminary results to present.