Call for research on online training programs for carers’ mechanisms of change to increase the quality of online training for families of people with dementia
Guidance
Evaluations of the effectiveness of internet training programs should explore mechanisms of change and aspects of the intervention design, such as reliability, the type of device used and modality of the intervention.
Explanation and example
The systematic review (Egan et al 2018) of internet training support for familiy carers lacks detail about potential factors which may influence the effectiveness of online programs (i.e. type of connectivity, development of the intervention, usability, etc.). The quality of individual studies selected for the systematic review was limited as more than 50% of the studies showed incomplete data reporting, and 25% showed a selective reporting of outcomes according to the risk of bias assessment performed making the generalization of the results difficult. However, the systematic review reported improvements on carer’s mental health outcomes by internet training.
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