Addressing loneliness among people living with dementia: The key features of personal contact interventions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Interventions to address loneliness among older adults have been developed which target modifiable influencing factors of social contact, social participation, and social support. However, few interventions have been designed specifically to address loneliness for use with people living with dementia. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to identify key features of personal contact interventions for use with people living with dementia. Method This was a mixed methods (concurrent triangulation) design using a convenience sample of family, friends, and health care providers of people living with dementia (n = 25). In face‐to‐face sessions, participants were read a short description of two personal contact interventions: an animal contact and a human contact intervention. They completed questionnaires to rate acceptability (adapted Treatment Perception and Preference measure), followed by semi‐structured interviews to explore their perspectives in‐depth. Descriptive statistics and conventional content analysis were completed, and themes from the qualitative analysis were emphasized in the interpretation of results. Result A majority (>80%) of participants rated personal contact interventions, with either a human or animal visitor, as being low risk, effective, logical and suitable to address loneliness among people living with dementia. While some form of human contact was viewed as essential for every person living with dementia, appropriateness of animal contact was seen as dependent on the individual characteristics of the person living with dementia. In addition to preventing loneliness, participants highlighted that the benefits of personal contact could include promoting happiness and comfort, offering something to do, and preventing responsive behaviors. For all personal contact interventions with a human or animal, it was important to prepare the contact, focus on meaningful relationships, consider flexible program delivery options, and ensure high quality facilitation of visits. Conclusion Personal contact with a human or animal shows promise to address loneliness experienced by people living with dementia when it is facilitated, flexible, and carefully designed to promote meaningful interactions. Future feasibility studies are needed to assess how people living with dementia experience and perceive personal contact interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".