Kate Gridley

Thesis

Thesis supervisors

Professor Yvonne Birks

Thesis Title

The use of standardised measures to collect research data from people with dementia

Thesis summary

Relatively little is known about the practice and implications of using standardised research measures with people living with dementia at different degrees of severity. It is crucial that we learn more about the ways that dementia symptoms and their progression can affect both the quality (reliability and validity) of quantitative data, and the experiences of research participants.

I plan to investigate the quantitative data collection encounter from the perspectives of participants living with dementia and research workers administering standardised measures. I will also consider the impact of dementia symptoms as they change over time, combined with the interview context and questionnaire content, on the types and quality of data collected.

Research

Research interests

Kate is researching the use of quantitative measures with people with dementia. She is interested in the experiences of people involved in quantitative dementia research and ways to improve these experiences without compromising data quality. Guides to best practice in dementia research emphasise the importance of flexibility and foregrounding the voice of the person with dementia, but how does this apply in large scale quantitative studies and trials? She has identified some important gaps in the our knowledge of the data collection encounter and plans to address these through fieldwork linked to the DETERMIND cohort study.

General research interests

Dementia research and research methods, social care research and post-diagnostic support.

Research Topic

My thesis is about the process of standardised data collection with people with dementia.

Teaching

Teaching

I teach a lecture on 'Social Perspectives on Dementia' for the 'Enabling Places and Spaces: Social Perspectives on Disability and Mental Health' module.

Publications

Publications

See full list in PURE

Biography

Biography

Kate Gridley is a core member of York's NIHR School for Social Care Research team (leading on public involvement) with 18 years’ experience undertaking health and social care research. Kate works on research with people with people with dementia and their carers, and has led several NIHR funded studies in this area including an evaluation of life story work, a study of specialist nursing services and an evaluation of the Good Life with Dementia peer-support model. Kate is part of the DETERMIND team, undertaking qualitative longitudinal research into the experiences of people self-funding social care; and the DYNAMIC team looking at social care support for people with young onset dementia. She is also undertaking a PhD attached to DETERMIND looking at the experiences and views of people involved in dementia research and the implications for future research. She holds an MSc Social Research Methods, University of York (Distinction) and BA Social Studies, Newcastle University (First Class).

Advisory committees

Kate is on the advisory committees of the following current projects: 

 - Adapting the Easy Read Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT-ER) for older social care users who need additional support to self-report: a content validity study.

 - Living alone with dementia: managing without informal support to contact and navigate services.