Data Update

Data Update 

With senior thesis quickly approaching and a variety of a data I have decided to narrow my spectrum of data collection. I have previously discussed expanding my research further by interviewing more employees and residents of assisted living facilities to better understand the experiences of the residents in these facilities, due to the many laws in place to protect these patients, I have decided that for my purposes I can get the same, if not even better results, from analyzing memoirs or autobiographies of employees in these facilities. To get a better grasp on the family perspective of their experiences with the elderly and senior living communities, I have requested access to multiple Facebook support groups for families and individuals in these situations. Some of these Facebook groups allow employees of senior living facilities to join and participate in discussions.

My current data reflects that women in assisted livings are very detail oriented and prefer things to be done in a very specific manor. This is similar to men but have found that men are more concerned about things that involve change, such as the way their food tastes in the assisted living as compared to the food they ate at home. I was also able to find, from interviewing employees, that there are different dynamics, in terms of aggressiveness, between men and women with women being more likely to become physically combative than men. Finally, I was able to find that both genders can tend to be very flirtatious, from my short observation it seemed women could be considered more forward with flirtatious comments and gestures than male residents. I am hoping from observing these group conversations I will be able to find even more commonalities but potentially an explanation to what could influence these behaviors.

I have currently requested access to three different support groups including, “Memory People” with 16,000+ members, “Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregivers Support” and “Working Daughter” a support group specifically for women caring for their elderly parent. I find it very interesting that from this list there was a specific outlet for women and none listed specifically for men. Upon being granted access I will be collecting data within the support groups to understand the gender dynamics, not only between residents of these facilities but also gender dynamics between family members that are responsible for a senior citizen.

https://www.asaging.org/blog/11-caregiving-memoirs-get-it-right

https://dailycaring.com/11-caregiver-support-groups-on-facebook-youll-want-to-join/