Concept of Dignity and its Attributes for People Suffering from Dementia

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K13442
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Social welfare and social work studies
• Research Institution: University of Tokyo Health Sciences
• Principal Investigator: Uchida Tatsuji 東京医療学院大学, 保健医療学部, 講師 (00715170)
• Research Collaborator: YAMANAKA Katsuo 筑波大学, 人間系, 准教授 (50282314)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 高齢者 / ケア / 認知症 / 尊厳

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aimed to investigate the concept of dignity and to discover the type of care that is needed to support the self-esteem of people afflicted with dementia (PWD). The researchers reviewed the past decade of research conducted in the healthcare field on the notion of dignity.We used a free questionnaire to survey care professionals with regard to their care practices that support dignity; 55 items related to their care practices were deemed applicable.The study was accomplished using the Delphi method to obtain a sense of the type of care practices that were appropriate to preserve the dignity of a PWD. This method made a degree of consensus possible by having experts answer the same questionnaire twice. To visually clarify the findings, the descriptive responses to the above-mentioned questionnaire were analyzed through correspondence analysis. The results revealed that the notion of dignity differed in the content of the responses from people of different occupations.

Free Research Field

社会科学