Exploring Social Engagement in a Virtual Participatory Culinary Nutrition Education Intervention for Dementia Prevention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Providing nutrition education through participatory cooking programs is a strategy to support adoption of healthy eating practices for dementia risk reduction. Social engagement, a modifiable risk factor for dementia, is an important feature of in‐person culinary interventions; few recommendations exist for virtual delivery. We aimed to examine participant social engagement within ‘The Cognitive Kitchen: Virtual Culinary Intervention for Dementia Prevention’. Method A six‐week virtual nutrition education and applied cooking class was delivered to two groups of 10 older adult participants. Two Registered Dietitians led discussions and cooking demonstrations focused on dementia risk reduction. Participants were invited to cook during sessions or prepare the recipes at their convenience. The study was guided by Interpretive Description methodology. Data included facilitator session notes, participant weekly virtual journal entries, two virtual focus group discussions, and individual interviews with 15 participants. The Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments (PERMA) model of well‐being helped structure thematic analysis examining participants’ experiences in the program and the function of social interaction. Result Participants appreciated the flexibility of the virtual setting and very few technical issues were observed. Thematic analysis revealed commonalities among participants’ experiences, including enjoyment of learning about creative ingredient transformation, enhanced accountability for meal preparation, and an appreciation for cooking as a social activity. Many participants recorded notes about meal preparation practices shared by other group members, and some participated in virtual recipe‐sharing, suggesting peer learning was a valuable component. Though the virtual program could not include casual social contact that would normally occur in an in‐person program, participants appreciated discussion questions to encourage social interaction. However, some found that cooking along with the demonstration limited their ability to learn and socialize. Conclusion Benefits to virtual delivery of a participatory cooking program include ability to expand program reach and reduced barriers to participation (e.g., travel, inclement weather, time). These considerations may be even more relevant for older adult care partners of persons with dementia. However, some elements of in‐person participation that foster social engagement are challenging to replicate virtually; additional effort by facilitators is required to ensure this important program component is maintained.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".