Background
Methods
Overview of projects
Lifestyle Matters feasibility study and Lifestyle Matters RCT
Putting Life In Years RCT
Participant recruitment
Study | Inclusion criteria | Recruitment techniques |
---|---|---|
Lifestyle Matters RCT | • Aged 65 years (Lifestyle Matters) or 75 years (Putting Life In Years) and over • Reasonable cognitive function (a score of 0–7 on 6-item Cognitive Impairment Test) • Living independently in sheltered accommodation, alone or with others in specific areas of Sheffield (Putting Life In Years/Lifestyle Matters) and Bangor (Lifestyle Matters) • Able to converse in English | • Referrals by district nurses • Community engagement • GP mail-outs • South Yorkshire Cohorta (Putting Life In Years only) |
Putting Life In Years RCT | ||
Lifestyle Matters feasibility study | • MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination) score over 18 • Geriatric Depression Scale score not indicating severe depression • Aged 60 + years | • Referrals by district nurses • Community engagement |
Data collection
Quantitative
Qualitative
Participant ID | Age | Sex | SF-36 mental health scorea | Lives with anyone? | Number of group sessions attendedb | Last employment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Participant A | 72 | Male | 90 | Yes | 15 | Mobile library driver |
Participant B | 79 | Female | 85 | Yes | 1 | Primary school teacher |
Participant C | 69 | Female | 90 | No | 14 | Health support worker |
Participant D | 77 | Female | 75 | Yes | 13 | Machine hand |
Participant E | 65 | Male | 70 | No | 15 | Psychiatric staff nurse |
Participant F | 77 | Male | 70 | No | 15 | Haulage contractor |
Participant G | 73 | Female | 50 | No | 14 | Teacher |
Participant H | 92 | Male | 90 | No | 9 | Building contractor |
Participant I | 88 | Female | 90 | No | 12 | Unknown |
Participant J | 70 | Female | 90 | Yes | 9 | Retail assistant |
Participant K | 69 | Female | 65 | No | 14 | Unknown |
Participant L | 68 | Female | 55 | No | 10 | Hairdresser |
Participant M | 72 | Male | 85 | No | 12 | Sales director |
Analysis
Ethical considerations
Results
Study | Target sample size | Total recruited | Recruitment method | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GP mail-out (% of total recruited) | Referrala (% of total recruited) | South Yorkshire Cohort (% of total recruited) | Otherb (% of total recruited) | Community engagement (% of total recruited) | Unknown (% of total recruited) | |||
Lifestyle Matters feasibility study | N/A | 28 | N/A | 0 | N/A | 3 (10.7) | 25 (89.3) | 0 |
Lifestyle Matters RCT | 268 | 288 | 270 (93.8) | 15 (5.2) | N/A | 3 (1.0) | 0 | 0 |
Putting Life In Years RCT | N/Ac | 157 | 136 (86.6) | 3 (1.9) | 11 (7.0) | 5 (3.2) | 0 | 2 (1.3) |
Lifestyle Matters feasibility study
Lifestyle Matters and Putting Life In Years RCTs
Quantitative results
Study | Site | Number of GP surgeries | Number sent | Number recruited | % recruited (range of % between surgeries) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lifestyle Matters RCT | North Wales | 8 | 3705 | 129 | 3.5 (1.5–5.4) |
North England | 7 | 5625 | 152 | 2.7 (0.6–3.7) | |
Putting Life In Years RCT | North England | 19 | 9051 | 136 | 1.5 (0.3–3.3) |
Qualitative results
‘I think if they had a bit more information in the initial letter... But all it said was that, you know, they were doing this research project…there was no information on what to really expect, I think there could have perhaps been a little bit more than that but apart from that I don’t think there was anything else’. (Participant E)
‘Yes, that was a good way to contact people. I mean they know if anybody’s sort of lonely or housebound or, you know, or recently bereaved or anything like that’. (Participant B)
‘…so they might, you know, consult with social services, you know, what area do you have people who live on their own…’. (Participant L)
‘…put a note, in, in the church hall, where people use that hall a lot…or doctor’s places to let them know that there’s, that there’s this thing going on. And people do, people do because we, we always look at notice boards to see what is going off’. (Participant D)
‘Everybody was mega-confident, you know… Everybody dying to talk, no issues kind of expressing themselves and so forth, really kind of confident’. (Facilitator 1)
‘...they already seem to have very effective ways of managing their lifestyle and, and keeping time for things that they want to do as well as things they have to do, so it might not have had a huge impact on them.’ (Facilitator 3)
‘...for some people they don’t wanna face things or there’s other things going on or they’ve just retired or it’s filling time and, you know, you just kind of cram your time with different activities or doing things and for them it was about thinking what’s important what’s useful for me what am I doing for other people?’ (Facilitator 2)
‘I think really it’s more for people on their own really than people that have got partners... I’m not lonely, I’m not on my own but there’s quite a few people that go there that are feeling lonely, their families are grown up and they don’t see much of them...’. (Participant D)
P: ‘Somebody’s who’s housebound or needing to get out or somebody who perhaps just been on their own or needs sort of rebuild their lives. I met someone her husband’s recently died and they’re wanting to get back in to things’. (Participant C)
‘Nobody in the medical or health professions encouraged me to do so it was my own initiative…’. (Participant G)
‘…but how do you find them? How do you find them? You know’. (Participant F)
‘I think, yes, support services, doctors, health professionals that kind of thing and it is difficult because I think we tried that for referrals from occupational therapists and not a lot came out of it and I don’t know whether that was understanding of the programme or the particular level that it’s pitched at the moment, I d-don’t know’. (Facilitator 2)
‘Suppose if they were in the communities then they could be, you know, posters up and some of the other groups that are out there already, you know, WI could keep an eye out for people that they think might benefit and more informal contacts, erm, but then the organisation of that gets more tricky if there was one overseer of the project. I think it’s different if they are just running in the community and, you know, taking ownership of them and it was a less informal group it might be easier for people.’ (Facilitator 3)
‘…I think the only way you would encourage other people to go is by someone of my age who’d attended a group actually going and talking to those people, because it’s very much a “suck it and see” situation, what works for me doesn’t work for someone else’. (Participant A)
‘...if it was a person that already knew about the programme and thought that this could be really useful for you and they are talking about it they might be more able to get a foot in the door perhaps.’ (Facilitator 3)
‘I wondered, it’s less about age but more about life stage, erm, I don’t know for some people if you’re better kind of subdividing groups into different what you perceive the life stage to be is that if you can achieve that so, for example, all the people kind of whether it be 93 or 65 who are a bit more active but perhaps have just retired making that transition but, you know, they’ve just given up a volunteering role whether a group for them not saying it as well as I did last time but whether they might be better in a group and then other people who’ve got more kind of physical challenges and, erm, they’re at a different life stage or experiencing life then they might be better’. (Facilitator 1)
‘I mean it would certainly need to be looked at in terms of, you know, whether that particular individual is (A) going to benefit from attending or (B) if everybody else is going to benefit from them being a part of it because that’s the whole point, everybody around that table need to benefit from everybody else’. (Facilitator 4)
‘I can imagine things that’ll get over emphasised (by a study team member when trying to recruit a participant) that look a little bit more like this, oh! but I can see this person really wants to meet people so I’ll sell that, but then I might not say that as much, and I don’t know that’s easy for me to speculate, erm, but I just wonder about that and I wonder whether there could be an extra kind of screening checklist to go through and to tick or to, you know, I’ve just got to make you aware that this is, this is what it’s about’. (Facilitator 1)