Krestar Maura L, Looman Wendy, Powers Sara, Dawson Nicole, Judge Katherine S
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA.
J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics. 2012 Apr;7(2):70-9. doi: 10.1525/jer.2012.7.2.70.
Several ethical considerations emerge when conducting research with memory-impaired individuals, including the individuals' ability to comprehend and accurately respond to survey questions. However, little empirical research exists on how to format surveys to decrease cognitive demands, thereby allowing researchers to more accurately survey this population. The current study presents data from structured interviews with 125 community-residing, memory-impaired older adults about their illness experience. The interview contained 14 scales varying in subjectivity, directionality, and response choice content. While objectivity did not affect participants' ability to use the full range of responses, participants with greater cognitive impairment tended to use simpler, dichotomous response categories, especially when questions had bidirectional response choices. Results suggest that memory-impaired individuals can participate in survey research, that such surveys should contain unidirectional frequency/amount items when possible, and that not all memory-impaired individuals will have difficulty completing surveys.
在对记忆受损个体进行研究时会出现若干伦理考量，包括个体理解并准确回答调查问题的能力。然而，关于如何设计调查问卷以降低认知要求，从而使研究人员能够更准确地对这一人群进行调查的实证研究却很少。当前的研究展示了对125名居住在社区的记忆受损老年人进行结构化访谈所得的数据，内容涉及他们的患病经历。访谈包含14个量表，在主观性、方向性和回答选项内容方面各有不同。虽然客观性并未影响参与者使用全部回答选项的能力，但认知障碍较严重的参与者倾向于使用更简单的二分法回答类别，尤其是当问题有双向回答选项时。结果表明，记忆受损个体能够参与调查研究，此类调查应尽可能包含单向频率/数量项目，而且并非所有记忆受损个体在完成调查时都会遇到困难。
