Week 5: Art can provide a non-verbal outlet for expressing emotions, especially when verbal communication becomes challenging!
Rusha B -
Hey Everybody!
I hope everyone is rested after Spring Break! I have a lot to report on this week.
These are the completed paintings that I will showcase to the participants when I am collecting data from my surveys! I had my first round of data collection yesterday at the FSL Facility! Caroline was extremely accommodating, escorting a senior participant into a quiet room while Anna and I facilitated the surveys. I am extremely grateful for Anna’s support and help during the data collection process. All participants had their consent forms signed by their caregivers and can participate in my survey. The dementia of the participants was unknown to me and during the process, I had to quickly accommodate each individual on the kinds of questions I asked and how many depending on their needs and level of cognitive ability. Some of the participants maintained a level of cognition and were able to answer my questions directly and very well, while others struggled to understand me or the question itself and gave simple yeses or nos (one of them was a 103-year-old WWII Veteran). I will have to account for the variance in responses in my paper, as well as how most of my 8 participants were women. This Thursday I will have my second round of surveys and hopefully, I will reach my target goal of 15–20 participants. The survey collection goes like this: Anna and I greet the participant, I show them one of three of the artworks, we give them a brief introduction to the survey, ask survey 1 questions, show them all the paintings, and ask them to select the one they saw earlier, ask survey 2 questions, and ta-da! Survey collection can be exhausting, as I find myself changing the wording of the question on the fly and repeating myself several times, and the data itself may not be what I’m expecting, and I find myself nervous or anxious that it will yield any significant results. We will see once I finish data collection next week! Thank you for your time!!
Best,
Rusha 🙂
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