Easing Everyday Decisions: Interdisciplinary development of interventions to support older adults' everyday decision-making
Lead Research Organisation:
Nottingham Trent University
Department Name: Sch of Social Sciences
Abstract
As the proportion of older adults in society grows, it becomes increasingly important to support older adults to remain happy, healthy, and independent far into old age. Being able to confidently make everyday decisions is at the heart of independent living, and is a core component of many activities of daily living, such as managing a budget, making purchasing decisions, safely managing medication, choosing nutritious food, and making travel and transportation plans. Poor decision-making is associated with financial vulnerability, susceptibility to scams, poor wellbeing, and ultimately, loss of independence. We aim to give older adults the tools they need to ease their everyday decision-making, helping them to live healthy, satisfying, and independent lives.
We already know that older adults make less accurate decisions than young adults on cognitively-demanding tasks, but there are also hidden costs that are less well understood, where decision-making may be slower, more effortful, and less efficient. The project will use a range of research methods to fully understand these hidden costs. The aim is to develop an intervention that a) eases the decision-making process for older adults, and b) provides compelling evidence to older adults and organisations on the full range of benefits from engaging with decision-making support.
We will conduct an interdisciplinary evaluation of the decision-making support methods, drawing on methods from different disciplines to gain a detailed understanding of the challenges that older adults face when making decisions, and the benefits of easing those decisions. First, we will consult older adults on practical measures to ease their decision making. We will consider methods that make task information easier to see (e.g., increasing size or removing distractions), and methods that reduce the amount of information that must be held in mind while making a decision (e.g., making notes or crossing out options). We will then evaluate the impact of the decision-making support using a range of research methods. We will use behavioural experiments to assess the speed and accuracy of decision-making, 'think-aloud' interviews to identify the cognitive steps, errors and difficulties that older adults report while making decisions, and functional brain imaging and eye tracking to assess the amount of effort and neural processing involved in making decisions.
The results of the interdisciplinary evaluation can be used to provide compelling guidance to older adults on how to ease their everyday decisions. Within this project, we will translate the findings of the evaluation into a workshop and guidance booklet for older adults on how practical support can ease their everyday decision-making, in a proof-of-principle assessment of the benefits of the guidance. Older adults will provide feedback immediately following the workshop and one month later, to provide information on their experience of putting the guidance into practice in their everyday lives. In the future, larger-scale evaluations can assess the longer-term, real-world benefit to older adults, and widen the scope of the guidance to include families of older adults and organisations who provide decision-making information to older adults.
We already know that older adults make less accurate decisions than young adults on cognitively-demanding tasks, but there are also hidden costs that are less well understood, where decision-making may be slower, more effortful, and less efficient. The project will use a range of research methods to fully understand these hidden costs. The aim is to develop an intervention that a) eases the decision-making process for older adults, and b) provides compelling evidence to older adults and organisations on the full range of benefits from engaging with decision-making support.
We will conduct an interdisciplinary evaluation of the decision-making support methods, drawing on methods from different disciplines to gain a detailed understanding of the challenges that older adults face when making decisions, and the benefits of easing those decisions. First, we will consult older adults on practical measures to ease their decision making. We will consider methods that make task information easier to see (e.g., increasing size or removing distractions), and methods that reduce the amount of information that must be held in mind while making a decision (e.g., making notes or crossing out options). We will then evaluate the impact of the decision-making support using a range of research methods. We will use behavioural experiments to assess the speed and accuracy of decision-making, 'think-aloud' interviews to identify the cognitive steps, errors and difficulties that older adults report while making decisions, and functional brain imaging and eye tracking to assess the amount of effort and neural processing involved in making decisions.
The results of the interdisciplinary evaluation can be used to provide compelling guidance to older adults on how to ease their everyday decisions. Within this project, we will translate the findings of the evaluation into a workshop and guidance booklet for older adults on how practical support can ease their everyday decision-making, in a proof-of-principle assessment of the benefits of the guidance. Older adults will provide feedback immediately following the workshop and one month later, to provide information on their experience of putting the guidance into practice in their everyday lives. In the future, larger-scale evaluations can assess the longer-term, real-world benefit to older adults, and widen the scope of the guidance to include families of older adults and organisations who provide decision-making information to older adults.
Technical Summary
This project will develop and evaluate practical methods for supporting older adults' everyday decisions. Older adults make less accurate decisions than young adults on cognitively-demanding tasks, and experience hidden costs where decision-making is slower, more effortful, and less efficient. These hidden costs are not well understood, particularly the extent to which they occur and affect wellbeing in situations where older adults are still able to make accurate, if effortful, decisions. We will use an interdisciplinary approach to fully understand these hidden costs, in order to give older adults the tools they need to ease their everyday decision-making, delaying the withdrawal from effortful cognitive tasks that prevents older adults from remaining cognitively active and socially-engaged.
Support methods will be identified that improve the perceptual clarity of decision-making materials and reduce the working memory burden associated with the decision-making task. Reducing perceptual and working memory demands will free up cognitive resources for the decision-making task. We will then use multidisciplinary methods to evaluate the impact of the decision-making support on not only speed and accuracy (behavioural experiments), but also the cognitive steps, errors, and difficulties experienced during task completion (think-aloud interviews), and the effort and neural processing required to complete the task (fMRI with pupillometry).
We will create a half-day workshop for older adults on the benefits of using perceptual and working-memory support, based on the evaluation findings. A one-month follow-up survey will assess the impact of the workshop on everyday decision-making and wellbeing. This small-scale application of the evaluation will provide the groundwork for future implementation and large-scale assessment of the intervention, in terms of 1) longer-term, real-world benefits to older adults, and 2) adoption of the decision-making support by organisations.
Support methods will be identified that improve the perceptual clarity of decision-making materials and reduce the working memory burden associated with the decision-making task. Reducing perceptual and working memory demands will free up cognitive resources for the decision-making task. We will then use multidisciplinary methods to evaluate the impact of the decision-making support on not only speed and accuracy (behavioural experiments), but also the cognitive steps, errors, and difficulties experienced during task completion (think-aloud interviews), and the effort and neural processing required to complete the task (fMRI with pupillometry).
We will create a half-day workshop for older adults on the benefits of using perceptual and working-memory support, based on the evaluation findings. A one-month follow-up survey will assess the impact of the workshop on everyday decision-making and wellbeing. This small-scale application of the evaluation will provide the groundwork for future implementation and large-scale assessment of the intervention, in terms of 1) longer-term, real-world benefits to older adults, and 2) adoption of the decision-making support by organisations.