Research Proposal: Qualitative investigation into Internet-based Interventions for Professional Dementia Caregivers’ Wellbeing

This paper proposes a qualitative investigation into internet-based intervention for the wellbeing of professional dementia caregivers. Dementia care is associated with care burden leading to negative psychological consequences, such as stress, anxiety, and depression. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has made access to the traditional face-to-face therapy challenging for dementia caregivers. Accordingly, some dementia caregivers have started to use therapy via information and communication technologies (ICTs) including internet-based interventions. The interventions offered in this medium include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychoeducation. To date, research has only examined the effects of these ICTs interventions among informal/family dementia caregivers, suggesting a need to examine the effects on professional dementia caregivers. In order to capture their first-hand experience receiving ICTs interventions on wellbeing, a qualitative research, using thematic analysis on semi-structured interview is proposed. Interviews will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of ICTs interventions on their mental wellbeing and care burden. Findings can inform the utility of these interventions for professional dementia caregivers in COVID-19 to help protect them from severe mental distress such as burnout supporting long-lasting care for their patients/clients.


Introduction
There has been a steady increase in life expectancy due to improvements in medicine, science, and technology (Weatherall et al., 2006). One of the several factors leading to dementia is ageing (Chen et al., 2009) and the population of aged people continues to increase with a resultant increase in the cost of caring for this ageing population (Papadopoulos, 2020;Wittenberg et al., 2020). New report shows that the number of people with dementia is going to double by 2050 (Health Europa, 2020). Consequently, caring for this population group becomes challenging to dementia caregivers who suffer physically and psychologically from care burden (Hsu & Willis, 2013). There is significant amount of stress as a result of care burden from dementia caregivers' caregiving role where gender and educational background are some of the risk factors (Adelman et al., 2014;Cheng, 2017;Yu et al., 2015).

Aims and Objectives
The aim of this research proposal is to conduct a qualitative investigation to

Research Question
The following research questions will be developed and addressed: (1.) how accessible is internet-based intervention for professional dementia caregivers? And (2.) how effective is internet-based intervention for professional dementia caregivers?

Study Design
This study will adopt a qualitative research design using thematic analysis in order to capture participants' experience and their subjective meanings as it will allow researchers "to gather detailed and specific information" (Booth et al., 2016;Clarke & Braun, 2018). The interview will be on Internet-based interventions and a focus group with semi-structured interviews (Green & Kotera, 2020). Furthermore, specific variables and data that are associated with the study will be analysed (Denscombe, 2017).

Study Setting
In the organisation that we intend to recruit study participants, there are eight hospitals and nine long-term (nursing homes) care facilities with each of them having more than a couple of dementia ward including geriatric psychiatric wards (Stadt Wien, 2020). Five dementia wards will be selected for the recruitment of study participants. The interview will allow minimal intrusion in order to help participants feel at ease as that would make them more open to discuss freely (Edwards & Kotera, 2020).

Sampling and Recruitment
Choosing the right populations is a crucial aspect of any successful research project (Kendall, 2003 (Kendall, 2003).

Eligibility Criteria
For participants to be eligible for the study, they must be 18 years old and above, and must be caregivers working with people living with dementia. Their workplace should either be in a nursing home or care facility, geriatric psychiatric department, day care centre and or in the community care setting: within the walls of care recipients' homes. These caregivers will also be receiving any form of psychological or psychosocial intervention.

Inclusion criteria
To be included in the study, carers must be caregivers of people with dementia either in a nursing facility, and community care setting. The caregivers can be either professionals on paid services or those in voluntary service.

Exclusion criteria
Caregivers not caring for people living with dementia will be excluded from the study. Also, caregivers with cognitive decline will not be included in the study.

Informed Consent
Each of the participants will be given a consent form to fill in ensuring them that their data will be kept safe and used ethically until they are safely deleted.

Demographic Outcomes
Demographic data from all participants which include their age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, level of education, and the number of years working with people with dementia will be collected (Edwards & Kotera, 2020).

Data Collection and Analysis
Data for the study will be collected through interviews and will be analysed.
Because we will be applying the qualitative method, the data collection through sampling will either take the semistructured form (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Data will be analysed by co-authors, and triangulation will be formed with another researcher in the field to ensure that data analysis was done fairly.

Procedure
There will be information available for the participants to know what the study is about and forms to seek participants' (Informed consent) consents. The interview questions will be open-ended in order to allow the participants the freedom to express themselves well (Gaudet & Robert, 2018). The audio recordings which will be transcribed and coded (Denscombe, 2017).
Participants can withdraw from the study at any time they feel to do so without any consequences as regards their interventions.

Ethical Considerations
Ethical approval of the study will be sought from the university and care facility`s review board. The data collected will be treated complying with the Data Protection Act 1988. Consequently, participants' personal data will strictly be protected as regulated by the general data protection regulation (GDPR) (Mourby et al., 2019). The research study will be in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (Edwards & Kotera, 2020).

Remuneration
None of the proposed participants will be rewarded nor be given any incentive for participating in the study.

Data Protection
All participants will be assured that their privacy will be ensured. The information collected from them as part of the study will be securely stored and only accessible by (research team) us and any future collaborators. In order to ensure anonymity, a unique participation number will be assigned to each participant. There will be no mention of names or places to ensure participants' confidentiality.

Study Strengths and Limitations
This research applying qualitative research approach will enable us to capture participants experience (Adu, 2019;Booth et al., 2016;Creswell & Creswell, 2018 Additionally, this study will enable us to understand the contributing factors that are responsible for the outcome.

Outcomes and Dissemination
This research will be disseminated by pitching findings of the study to stakeholders, policymakers, researchers and non-researchers through conferences, peerreviewed journal publication and through the media. Furthermore, findings and highlights about the research findings will be published using the social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and ResearchGate.