Communication skills in people with dementia - A scoping review of assessment tools and psychometrics (CoSDe)
Assessment tools to evaluate the communicative abilities of people with dementia for healthcare professionals: a scoping review.
People with dementia are already affected by impairments in their communication skills in the early stages of the disease. This can lead to misunderstandings in daily communicative situations with relatives or carers. These problems in social interactions lead to people with dementia reducing their social contacts and participating less in leisure activities. Relationships, including with family members, can be difficult to maintain and lead to social withdrawal, which can negatively impact the quality of life of those affected and their relatives. One way of counteracting social withdrawal is to intensify the communication opportunities offered by family members or carers. To maintain dialogue, it is crucial to specifically collect and assess communication skills.
The aims of this project are: Firstly, to systematically record the instruments available for assessing the communicative abilities of people with dementia. Secondly, to describe these instruments, considering their specific characteristics, their use in different health professions and their psychometric properties. Thirdly, to identify areas where further research is needed.
The results of the scoping review can help to systematically identify the knowledge of instruments available and to obtain a broad overview of suitable instruments. In addition, the results provide indications for future studies as to which assessment instruments should be developed, tested, or implemented for this area. The scoping review follows the quality guidelines of the 'Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews' (PRISMA-ScR). The scoping review protocol is registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF) platform and is available at the following link https://osf.io/5r2vk.
Project team
Doris Detter-Biesl BSc MSc
Academic Staff, Research Coordinator, Marketing Coordinator, Media Didactics
Sebastian Rosendahl Huber MScN
Research Nursing Science, Scientific member of the institutional ethics board
