Article One: What aspects of social network are protective for dementia? Not the quantity but the quality of social interactions is protective up to 15 years later (Ameiva, Stoykova, Matharan, Helmer, Antonucci, & Dartigues, 2010).
This study was a longitudinal cohort study that aimed to better understand the positive influence of social networks on dementia. As this study looks into social networks this study is relevant for my practice question which also looks into the effects of social activities on dementia. This study used the data of the PAQUID study a large prospective study of cognitive aging conducted in France. This study included 2089 subjects and followed for a period of 15 years to examine the affects of different characteristics in a social network. This study increases the generalisability to the population as a large sample size increases the certainty about the estimated effects (Hoffman, Bennett & Del Mar, 2010). Although the people in the study are different to New Zealand, the age group is appropriate for my question. This study followed the participants for 15 years, this helps to support the credibility of the study (Hoffman, Bennett & Del Mar, 2010). To avoid social network decline as a result of cognitive deterioration the subjects diagnosed with dementia during the initial visit, first year and third year visits were excluded from the results. By excluding these individuals from the study this may have affected the results and bias towards the socially active individuals as the individually who were excluded may have had less frequent socialising.
The variables the study examined included the marital status, the number of people, the nature of the ties within the network, satisfaction of relationships, perception of being misunderstood and the ratio of give/receive in relationships throughout the life time. Although this study looks into the many factors of a
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