Advance care planning (ACP) is a process in which the patient expresses their wishes regarding future medical care in the presence of their family and health care provider. ACP is generally...Show moreAdvance care planning (ACP) is a process in which the patient expresses their wishes regarding future medical care in the presence of their family and health care provider. ACP is generally accepted in Western countries and has a positive effect on end-of-life care for people with dementia. However, culture affects expectations and preferences regarding end-of-life care and decision making. This study compared the acceptability of and preference for two types of ACP interventions for patients with dementia in health care providers from the Netherlands, the US and Japan. One intervention focused on concrete treatment orders in which the patient makes specific decisions. The other focused on what the patient finds important in life, resulting in global goals of care. A total of 125 participants were assessed by means of a structured interview and a questionnaire. Participants found both types of ACP acceptable, in general and per country. A multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated no significant difference in acceptability of the concrete or the global ACP approach between countries when adjusted for age and gender. However, age was a significant predictor of acceptability of the concrete ACP approach (2 (2, 123) = 6.32, p = .042), with older participants being less likely to find it acceptable compared to not finding it acceptable (W(8) = 5.50, p = 0.019). Participants preferred the global ACP approach for patients with dementia. A multinomial logistic regression analysis indicated no significant differences in preference between countries when adjusted for age and gender in general. However, Dutch participants were less likely to prefer the global ACP approach (W(8) = 5.18, p = .023). The relationship between country and preference was not influenced by whether participants most strongly considered what the patient with dementia wants for themselves, what the patient’s family wants or what they as the health care provider want for their patient when making medical decisions. ACP is generally regarded as an acceptable form of care for patients with dementia by health care providers across countries. Future research could more specifically determine which cultural or demographic aspects affect health care providers’ views on different ACP approaches.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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The current thesis investigates the preference of Dutch monolingual infants for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Our study is a contribution to the ManyBabies 1...Show moreThe current thesis investigates the preference of Dutch monolingual infants for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Our study is a contribution to the ManyBabies 1 project (Bergmann et al., 2018), which is the first large-scale replication project in infant research. We use the head-turn preference procedure and test all the infants at the age of 8-12 months with the stimuli in North American English. We hypothesize that the infants in the present study prefer IDS to ADS because of IDS exaggerated prosodic properties. The linguistic content of the stimuli is not available to the infants because the stimuli are in English, a language they have not been exposed to before. Moreover, we want to find out if there is any difference between younger (8-month-olds) and older infants (11-month-olds). Previous research has demonstrated that younger infants show a more reliable preference for IDS over ADS in comparison with older infants. We statistically analyze the results using a linear-mixed effects model because of its advantages such as taking into consideration random variables and dealing well with non-normal data.Show less
