“The dementia awareness game has been played over 1000 times and research conducted by Queen's University Belfast on its impact shows that after playing the game, a person's attitudes to people living with dementia improve! This statistically significant information is being prepared for an international journal”

For more details please contact Dr Gillian Carter via email g.carter@qub.ac.uk



The Dementia Awareness game is part of a research initiative by Dr Gary Mitchell, Dr Gillian Carter and Professor Christine Brown Wilson from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen's University Belfast.

The game, funded by the Dementia Development Services Trust, has been co-designed with people living with dementia and representatives from Dementia NI.

Approach

To help us understand the impact of using the dementia game on someone’s attitude and understanding of dementia, those accessing the game were asked to complete a questionnaire before and then after playing the game. To do this we used the Approaches to Dementia questionnaire consisting of 19 questions. This helped us to understand someone’s attitude towards dementia by working out the extent to which those playing the game recognised people affected by dementia as unique individuals with the same value as any other person. It also highlighted to us any sense of optimism or pessimism the person had about the abilities and the future of the person affected by dementia. Higher scores indicated more positive attitudes towards people with dementia.

Results

Overall 997 people accessed the game, of these 457 people completed the Approaches to Dementia questionnaire before and then after playing the game. After completing statistical analysis on the information collected from the questionnaires, it was shown that those playing the game developed a significantly greater optimistic view of the abilities of people with dementia and what might be achieved by them. They were also significantly more likely to recognise people with dementia as unique individuals with the same values as any other person.