City Research Online

Abstract

Background
Speech and language therapists apply word finding therapies for people with aphasia with good outcomes on treated words but limited evidence of generalisation to untreated words. As generalisation cannot be assumed, there is a need to select words for therapy that are meaningful to people with aphasia.

Aims
This study sought the views of people with aphasia to inform the stimuli for a word finding in conversation treatment. To this end, the research question was: What conversation topics do people with aphasia find most meaningful to talk about?

Methods & Procedures
This qualitative study used focus groups to identify meaningful conversation topics across a sample of 12 people with chronic aphasia (two groups of six). Participants were recruited from three community aphasia groups. The focus groups were videoed and transcribed. The transcription was analysed using framework analysis. A consensus decision process was then used by researchers to identify the themes with high agreement.

Outcomes & Results
Twenty conversation topics were generated. Consensus was that eight topics were meaningful. The three topics rated most meaningful were 1) family and friends, 2) food and drink, and 3) living with aphasia. Two topics reached consensus as not meaningful. Ten topics did not reach consensus.

Conclusions
The conversation topics, ‘family and friends’, ‘food and drink’ and ‘living with aphasia’ were most meaningful to this sample of people with aphasia. Using therapy stimuli from these conversation topics has the potential to create meaningful treatments.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med-ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Publisher Keywords:	anomia; therapy stimuli; topic selection; framework analysis; focus groups
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics R Medicine > RC Internal medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Language & Communication Science
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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