This survey is currently closed. Please contact Basil Alzougool (b.alzougool@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au) for further assistance.
Information Needs of Informal Carers Survey
The survey of information needs of informal carers is a research activity of the University of Melbourne. This survey looks at understanding the scenarios and experiences that informal carers may face throughout their caring journey which are related to their information needs. For more details, please click on the Research Overview. Information you provide will help to improve our knowledge about information needs of informal carers.The survey will take about 15 minutes of your time to complete. Participation is voluntary and confidentiality will be maintained. The survey should be completed by a family member, relative, neighbour or friend who is
This research has been approved by the University of Melbourne-Human Research Ethics Committee (# 0717560.2) and it is under the supervision of Dr. Shanton Chang and Dr. Kathleen Gray. If you have any questions about the survey please contact Basil Alzougool or Dr. Chang or Dr. Gray at the University of Melbourne.
Thank you in advance, and best wishes for your important work as a carer.
Basil Alzougool
PhD Candidate
Department of Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Phone: +61 3 8344-1544
Email: b.alzougool@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
Research Overview
Project Title:
Information Needs of Informal Carers
Researchers:
Dr. Shanton Chang slwc@unimelb.edu.au
Dr. Kathleen Gray kgray@unimelb.edu.au
Basil Alzougool (PhD Candidate) b.alzougool@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
Research Aims
Informal carers provide unpaid healthcare services for people who are unable to care for themselves, often parents, children, or relatives. They play a major role in assisting and supporting formal healthcare services, and carry out many primary care duties. Despite the importance of informal carers to the community, there has been little research that explores their information needs comprehensively. Understanding the completing of these needs is important for improving support for carers’ decision-making, empowering carers to provide quality and safety of care to those they care for, and ensuring a collaborative approach to patient care in the healthcare systems.
A better understanding of information needs of informal carers as experienced by them has been developed and tested previously with a small sample of informal carers. This complete understanding consists of a number of scenarios and experiences that informal carers may face throughout their caring journey which are related to their information needs.
The aim of this project is to examine to what extent these scenarios are applicable to the wider carers’ community. The participants will mainly consist of persons (carers) who are involved in caring for other people (e.g. parents, children, relatives, friends) who are unable to care for themselves for different reasons; i.e. frail elderly or significant disability, or chronic diseases. The information obtained from this project will help to improve our knowledge about information needs of informal carers and may in turn help information providers and developers to provide and deploy more effective health information systems that can assist informal carers and the persons needing care.
Participants would be asked to contribute to this study by filling a questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of 20 scenarios and experiences that participants perhaps face during their caring journey. For each scenario, participants will be asked to indicate how often they have been in such situations. Participants will also be asked some demographic questions. The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to fill out.
Consent and Confidentiality
The project does not involve any risks. The only anticipated inconvenience for participants would be the time taken by the survey. Participation in the survey will be anonymous. The information you provide will be treated as confidential and used for research purposes only. Confidentiality of the information provided will be protected to the fullest possible extent, within the limits of the law. Access to the information will be restricted to the investigators only. As required by the University, data will be held in locked cabinets in the Department of Information Systems, and destroyed using confidential waste disposal techniques after five years. No individual person will be identifiable in the research report written up about the survey.