Using Assistive Technology in care homes and community settings: a discourse analysis of text and talk in three cases of evaluation reports

Curran, Monica (2024) Using Assistive Technology in care homes and community settings: a discourse analysis of text and talk in three cases of evaluation reports. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Assistive Technologies (AT) are widely heralded as key means of providing “the next generation of care”, saving older peoples’ care costs by facilitating self-care, rather than depending on paid and family carers. My contrasting experience as a researcher in care homes and with older people has led me to question the ways in which such claims were and are made in media and research discourses.

This study had two starting points relating to how I had engaged as a researcher in this area. The first, was my search for ways to recognise challenges to researchers engaging people in research conversations, in unfamiliar topics such as care technology. The second, was to recognise how older peoples’ and carers’ voices may not be heard, when introducing such technologies in care.

These critically examined uses of AT discourses in a two-phased study. The first, examined discourses used in three evaluation reports. The second, examined interview transcripts from interviews for one study, CHATS. Phase 1 used Discourse Analysis (DA) to locate evaluation report text in relation to wider discourse organising frameworks for using AT. Phase 2 used Discursive Devices Analysis (DDA) to identify how CHATS study participants used Discursive Devices, in interviews, to position themselves as using AT.

These accounts showed people using DDs to counteract loss of respect and power as care institutions introduced AT into daily living.

People involved in using AT in care did not present themselves as passive recipients of either ATs or of research encounters but as working to resist stigmatising processes in introducing AT in practice. Findings point to new directions for research involving people and care technology.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	28 May 2025 14:11
Last Modified:	28 May 2025 14:11
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99331
DOI:

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