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Introduction: The western world is seeking increased implementation of assistive technology (AT) to meet the challenges of an ageing population. The objective of this study is to explore perspectives on AT use among home-dwelling older adults with or without cognitive impairment.

Methods: This study combines findings from a cross-sectional study with a questionnaire package (n = 83) and from qualitative individual interviews (n = 7) and is part of a larger study, the Assisted Living Project. Combining methods promotes complementary inquiries into a phenomenon.

Results: The participants already use ATs: TVs, social alarms, mobile phones, stove timers, electronic med- ical dispensers, PCs and tablet computers. They were both optimistic and skeptical of AT, and expressed different perspectives and expressed different perspectives on ATs in relation to usability, privacy and fear of losing personal face-to-face care.

Conclusions: This study reveals that older adults’ perspectives on AT are multifaceted and complex, and can partly be explained by the interacting factors in the HAAT model: person, technology, environment, and context. Further exploration in relation to older adults with health challenges, as well as ethical per- spectives on AT implementation, is required for this group.

This research explores the experiences of Beth, a university student in the UK, as she comes to be labelled as ‘dyslexic’, and as she has her diagnosis taken away. Through use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and discourse analysis, the research seeks to understand how Beth made sense of these experiences, and to explore the discursive ‘life’ of dyslexia within this sense-making. The discussion in this paper proceeds chronologically through Beth’s story, from ‘struggle’, to ‘legitimation’ to ‘derogation’, and concludes with a call to recognise the role of diagnosis in the field of special educational needs (SEN) from a social constructionist and relational perspective.

An increase in descriptive evidence regarding person-centered approaches for older people with intellectual disability (ID) is important, due to increased life expectancy and the present lack of sufficiently underpinned interventions. This is especially true of interventions designed to increase well-being and quality of life. A specific Dutch example is the Integrated Emotion-Oriented Care approach. Despite its status as a good practice, its effectiveness has not yet been proved, nor has descriptive evidence been made available. The primary aims of this qualitative study are to identify the intervention components, to provide demonstrative illustrations and to gain an in-depth understanding of the use of these components in the day-to-day support of older people with ID. A content analysis of five key documents was carried out. Five semi-structured interviews were then conducted with early adopters, followed by a concept mapping study with daily users. The final stage in the data collection process was a series of five focus-group interviews with experts and experienced support staff. The five intervention components of Integrated Emotion-Oriented Care for older people with ID have been systematically identified and described in detail in five narrative summaries drawn up in collaboration with early adopters, experts and experienced support staff. This study provides valuable insights that offer descriptive evidence for Integrated Emotion-Oriented Care in the care for older people with ID. Both implications and possible opportunities for future research are discussed.

Background and objective

Everyday information and communication technologies (EICTs) are increasingly being used in our society, for both general and health-related purposes. This study aims to compare how older adults with cognitive impairment perceive relevance and level of EICT challenge between eHealth use and general use.

Methods

This cross-sectional study includes 32 participants (65–85 years of age) with cognitive impairment of different origins (due to e.g., stroke or dementia). The Short Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire+ (S-ETUQ+) was used, providing information about the relevance of EICTs and measuring the EICT level of challenge. Data were analysed with descriptive statistics, standardized z-tests and Fisher’s exact tests. The significance level was set to p < .05.

Results

The result shows that the perceived amount of relevant EICTs for eHealth use was lower in all 16 EICTs compared to those of general use. About the perceived level of challenge, a significant difference was detected in one of the seven included EICTs between eHealth use and general use.

Conclusions

In this sample, all EICTs were perceived as having lower relevance for eHealth use compared to general use, suggesting that the purpose of using an EICT affects the perceived relevance of it. Also, once an EICT is perceived as relevant and used for eHealth purposes, there seem to be little to no differences in perceived challenge compared to the same EICT used for general purposes.

Aim: The increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and impairments in the population is putting new demands on health and rehabilitation services. Research on self-help groups suggest that participation in these groups might have a positive impact on people who are struggling with chronic illnesses or disabil- ities. In this study, we explore person-centred support in which participants in self-help groups are under- going rehabilitation to develop their knowledge, skills and confidence necessary to handle life’s challenges.

Method: The design is exploratory, analysing data from informant interviews and focus groups (a total of 32 participants) using a Grounded Theory inspired approach to analyse. The participants were rehabilita- tion clients aged between 20 and 60 years; eight were men and twenty-six were women.

Results: Three main categories emerged as being important self-help processes that were likely to pro- mote positive rehabilitation outcomes: (1) Learning and practicing safely, (2) A refuge from expectations, (3) Internal processes that accentuate the positives.

Conclusion: Peer support delivered through the structured self-help environment can facilitate the devel- opment of new self-awareness, promote acceptance and adjustment, facilitate the establishment of new skills and enable transfer of learning to new environments, including the workplace.

Shy children can present challenges for teachers aiming at inclusive classrooms. Their educational attainments can be lower than their peers, they may have difficulties in adjustment to school and they can be at risk of meeting clinical criteria for social anxiety disorder. One recurrent finding is that they are often quiet across a range of school situations. The study reported here focused on teachers’ strategies to engage shy students in frequently occurring oral activities, such as group work, in elementary school classrooms. Data were gathered through post-observation stimulated-recall interviews with eight teachers who had experience of success with shy students and three focus groups with 11 similarly experienced teachers. The analysis examined teachers’ actions with these children to enhance their visible engagement in activities that require oral participation. The findings suggest that although teachers attended to the psychosocial aspects of student engagement, there was little emphasis on the pedagogic purposes of oral activities with these children. We conclude that more attention should be paid to the academic aspects of oral activities when aiming at inclusion for shy children.

In the year 2015, Austria was one of the main European destinations of displaced persons. According to education authoritiesaround 15,000 children with a forced migration background of school age who arrived in Austria over the course of a few months from late2015 to the beginning of 2016 called for immediate and partly temporary solutions. Due to Austrian legislation and unlike other countries,every child living in Austria between the ages of six to fifteen (or for nine years of schooling) is entitled to receive compulsory education. Though the school administration of Vienna generally promotes an inclusive approach to education in regular schools, schools inneighbourhoods with a large refugee population were reportedly unable to provide appropriate and adequate education for all children. Inresponse, the local school authority in Vienna decided to establish temporary classrooms in refugee accommodations. This article describesand analyses the emergence of new educational structures from the point of view of university students and lecturers who took part in theone and a half years of its implementation. The article thereby aims to document specific perspectives on educational emergency measuresat a certain point of time. In both the primary and secondary sectors, the emergence of a new temporary field of specialised and exceptional education were observed and recorded in a thick description of dynamic processes of trans-institutional, trans-organisational, transprofessional, communal, and individual development. Thus, the article presents a multifaceted picture of problems in refugee education under exceptional circumstances. The findings illustrate how insufficient educational opportunities for those falling outside the age of compulsory schooling – in particular, preschool children as well as youth older than fifteen – diminish possibilities for the inclusion of these children within and beyond education.

Evidence suggests that disability negatively affects people’s propen- sity to find a partner. Persons with disabilities that eventually find a partner do so later in life compared to the average population. There is a lack of studies on the differences in partnership opportu- nities for persons with disabilities compared to those without dis- abilities in Sweden. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of disability on partnership formation and to assess whether partner- ship formation varies as a function of individual demographic and socio-economic factors. We use nationwide data available in the Swedish Initiative for Research on Microdata in Social and Medical Sciences (Umeå SIMSAM Lab). We follow persons born from 1973 to 1977 when they were from 16 to 37 years of age and analyze their data using logistic regression. Our findings indicate that regardless of whether a person started to receive a disability pension at an early age or later, it was associated with lower odds for partnership forma- tion. For persons who started receiving disability pension from 16 to 20 years of age, chances for partnership formation reduced with increase in age of partnership. Individuals that started to receive disability pension later were more likely to form partnership prior to receiving disability pension. Partnership formation was less likely among persons born outside Sweden, in persons with mothers born outside Sweden, in individuals born by unmarried mothers and in persons, whose mothers had a high level of education. Partnership was high among women and among persons who had many mater- nal siblings. In conclusion, receiving disability pension was associated with reduced chances for partnership formation. Receiving disability pension might imply financial constraints that negatively influence partnership formation supporting Oppenheimer’s theory on the eco- nomic cost of marriage and the uncertainty hypothesis.

Purpose: To analyse physical activity of patients during their hospital stay and to explore the relationship between physical activity and barriers to physical activity.

Methods: This was a secondary analysis of physical activity data for patients admitted to the internal medicine and surgical wards. Physical activity data, collected with a wireless patch sensor, was operationalized as time spent lying, sitting/standing, and walking. Barriers to physical activity included patients’ pain levels, the use of urinary catheters, intravenous tubing, oxygen lines, drains, and level of dependence. Regression analysis explored the relationship between physical activity and barriers to physical activity.

Results: Physical activity data were collected in 39 patients (aged 27–88, mean 54 years) during hospital stay. Patients were admitted for a median of 10 d (interquartile range [IQR]: 7–15 d). These patients were lying for a median of 12.1 h (7.6–17.7), sitting/standing 11.8 h (6.3–15.7), and walking 0.1 h (0–0.3) per day. Time lying during the day related to pain levels (β = 0.4 h per unit increase in pain, p < 0.01) and drain use (β = 3.1 h, p < 0.01).

Conclusions: Patients spent the most time during the hospital stay lying in bed. Improved pain management and decreased drain use may be worth exploring to increase inpatient physical activity.