Elderly Nursing Home Residents, Article Critique Example

Tsai, Hsiu Hsin, Yun-Fang Tsai, Hsiu-Hung Wang, Yue Cune Chang, and Hao Hua Chu.”Videoconference Program Enhances Social Support, Loneliness, and Depressive Statusof Elderly Nursing Home Residents.” Aging and Mental Health 14.8 (2010): 947-54.Print.

Article Critique

The article and study were both well set up and executed. One potential issue is that due to the unwillingness of nursing homes and individual subjects, the sample was self-selecting and not fully random. The sample size was small and had this issue with its selection process, but these flaws were all acknowledged by the authors as the results of logical constraints on the study.

Problem

Elderly in nursing homes are usually secluded from their families and alone for the first time in their lives. Often their families visit them infrequently, esp­ecially after some time has passed into their stay. This lonely state result in worse mental states, signified by diminished mental and physical healthiness.

Loneliness and the Elderly

This article’s central hypothesis was that teleconferencing would help alleviate the feelings of loneliness and other negative symptoms that it causes in the elderly living in nursing homes.

Subjects

Studying this required examining senior citizens, with those specifically living in nursing homes being observed in the experiment. Retirement homes across Taiwan were used, with those nursing homes that accepted the experiment and had cooperative residents being the source of subjects. They had to be above the age of sixty, within a range of similar test scores beforehand, and logistically feasible.

Variables

They sought to adjust for some demographic numbers such as age, gender, marital status as well with environmental factors such as duration of nursing home stay and also frequency of in person visits from family members. Afterwards, they were measured for their depressive states using the Geriatric Depression Scale. On top of this, results were measured using loneliness scales.

Instruments

The two aforementioned tests, studying depressive and loneliness are the main tools used to quantify otherwise subjective emotions by the authors. According to the paper, they can be considered reputable test by experts on the topic. The authors used the multiple factors mentioned in variables to control for certain traits and were therefore able to run regression afterwards. This allows them to try and isolate the impact of the independent variables other than the frequency of video conferencing with their loved ones.

Analysis of Data

According to the study, there were fifty-seven total subjects. Twenty-eight participants remained in the control group and twenty-one in the experimental group. The experimental group was the group who were teleconferencing with loved ones. There were differences between the two groups, and the difference in their change over the first three months was significantly different in terms of loneliness and depressive state. The experimental group scored 1.4 points better on the depression test than the control group.

Discussion

According to the results of this study, elderly subjects who were allowed to teleconference were in better states than those who did not interact with their family in this way. It seems sensible that this would occur with more social interaction and it is important to note that even an impersonal method such as teleconferencing can provide similar effects for the elderly.