Langer and Rodin

Question	Answer
What is control?	Control is when one has choice over decisions and actions and the extent to which one feels they can regulate their own behaviour and the environment - perceived control may be more important than actual control.
What did Adler (1930) describe the need to control as and how was this supported by Bengston (1973) and Butler (1967)?	Adler (1930) described the need to control one's own personal environment as "an intrinsic necessity of life itself". It's important to see the significance of control because research done by Bengston (1973) and Butler (1967) has found that increased control results in more successful aging, measured by a decrease in morbidity, mortality and psycho-disability as an individual feels a sense of purpose and usefulness
What did Langer et al (1975) find about inducing perception of control in hospital patients?	Langer et al (1975) found that inducing perception of control in hospital patients by verbally communicating potential control resulted in patients requesting fewer pain killers and sedatives and were observed by staff as less anxious.
What did Stotland and Bumenthal (1964) find about choice and students taking a test?	Stotland and Bumenthal (1964) found that students that had not been given a choice of when to take a test were more anxious (measured by palmar sweating) than those who had been given a choice.
What startling evidence did Ferrare (1962) find about geriatric patients?	Ferrare (1962) presented some startling data from his observations of geriatric patients - he found that 16/17 patients who had no choice of residence when they were moving to a nursing home died within 10 weeks - all of these deaths were classified as unexpected.
What specifically did L+R aim to investigate about effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice in a group of nursing home patients?	L+R aimed to investigate the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice in a group of nursing home patients, specifically if increased control has beneficial effects on mental and physical alertness, activity, sociability and general satisfaction.
What did they hope to find out about direct experience of personal responsibility and generalizations?	They also wished to see whether direct experience of personal responsibility would be generalized such that those participants who had greater control in specific situations generalized this to other aspects of life
What was the place the study was conducted like?	The study was conducted in a nursing home in Connecticut, USA that was rated as one of the finest. There were 4 floors in the home and 2 were selected which has residents of a similar socioeconomic background and there wasn't any communication between the floors so treatment wouldn't be affected.
What were the 2 groups and how were they assigned?	1 floor was randomly assigned to be the experimental group (responsibility induced group) while the other was to act as a control group (comparison group). Both groups were briefed by the staff.
How many males and females in the RIG group, what was the emphasis and what provisions did they have?	In the RIG, there were 8 males and 39 females and the emphasis for this group was that residents were responsible for themselves and they were asked to give their opinions on how complaints are handles. The RIG were also allowed to select a plant to be taken care of by themselves and they were allowed to choose which night was to be "film night"
How many males and females in CG, what was the emphasis and what provisions did they have?	The CG consisted of 9 males and 35 females and the emphasis for this group was on staff being responsible for patients and they were told that all their complaints would be handled by the staff.The CG were given a plant that was taken care of by someone else and told which night was to be film night.
How were the messages for the RIG and the CG different?	The RIG's message was importance of resident's personal responsibility and importance of control and decision making while CG's message was stressed staffs responsibility for patients. 3 days later, staff reinforced messages to both groups
When was the 1st questionnaire completed and what did it assess?	2 questionnaires were used. The 1st questionnaire was completed a week before the briefing by a research assistant who was unaware of the experimental hypothesis. It assessed how much control patients felt they had over their life and how happy/active they felt using an 8 point scale (0 -none, 8-total).
What did the research assistant also rate?	The research assistant also rated the resident's alertness after every interview.
When was the 2nd questionnaire completed and what did it assess?	The 2nd questionnaire was completed 3 weeks after the briefing by staff nurses on both floors who were unaware of the experiment. They assessed the ratings of happiness,alertness, activity, sociability, dependency, eating and sleeping habits as well as the proportion of time spent reading, watching TV, visiting patients/family, watching the staff etc.
What behavioral measures were assessed?	Behavioral measures were also assessed such as attendance to movie night and participating in the jelly bean competition.
What did the baseline measure show?	The pre-test assessment of the residents showed the 2 groups were very similar prior to the experiment - this was an important baseline measure.
How did the RIG compare to the CG in terms of happiness?	In the RIG, 48% of the residents reported themselves as being happier compared to just 25% of the residents in the CG
How did the RIG rate themselves in terms of alertness and activity compared to the CG?	Residents in the RIG also reported being significantly more active after the experimental treatment than the CG (p<0.01). Residents in the RIG were also rated as having greater increases in their levels of alertness than the CG by the interviewer.
How did the 2 groups compare in terms of perceived control?	Questions related to perceived control showed no significant increase for the RIG although 20% indicated that they didn't understand what "control" meant and these answers were perhaps not very meaninful
How did the social levels of RIG and CG compare?	The RIG showed increases in the proportion of time visiting other patients, people outside the home and talking to the staff and they spent less time engaging in passive activities unlike the CG who showed an increase in time spent watching staff.
What were the TCS (total change score from pre and post test) for the 2 groups? Whats the difference between the mean scores?	When analyzing the nurse ratings for each patient (total pre-test score from the total post-test score) a positive average total change score of 3.97 for the RIG was found, compared with a negative average total change score of -2.39 for the CG - the difference between these mean scores is significant at 6.39 (p<0.005).
How did the improvement levels of the RIG compare to the CG?	Of the residents in the RIG, 93% were considered to have improved compared to only 21% to the CG
What were the findings for the behavioral methods?	With the behavioral methods, film night attendance was significantly higher in the RIG (p<0.5) and in the jelly bean guessing competition, 10 residents from the RIG and only one resident from the CG participated, a significant difference (p<0.1)
What ideas do the findings support?	The findings clearly support the view that "inducing a greater sense of personal responsibility in people who may have virtually relinquished decision making, either by choice or necessity produces improvement".
What was surprising about the CG's level of debilitatement?	Despite the fact that residents in the CG were told that staff members were there to make them happy, and residents were treated in a sympathetic manner, 71% of the CG were actually rated as becoming more debilitated over the short 3-week period of this study.
What was unclear about the behavioral measures?	It's not clear whether the behavioral improvements shown (e.g. attendance at film night) was a direct or indirect consequence of increased perception of choice and decision making opportunities. Perhaps the increased sense of control led to increased happiness and this in turn caused behavioral improvements.
Were the behavioral improvements big/small?	The behavioral improvements however, were quite small though significant - perhaps bigger improvements might be achieved by more individually administered treatment and repeated treatment.
What do findings suggest about sense of personal responsibility?	The findings suggest that mechanisms can and should be developed to increase sense of personal responsibility of people in care homes and these treatments could slow down or even reverse the apparently inevitable negative consequences of ageing.
How does L+R's field experiment increase internal validity?	A strength of L+R's research is that by being a field experiment, it takes place in a naturalistic setting - a nursing home in Connecticut which increases internal validity as it measures natural behaviour
How is internal validity increased by the nurses participating?	Internal validity is also increased by the fact that the nurses were unaware of the research aims so demand characteristics and bias wouldn't have affected the results
How do confounding variables affect the internal validity in this study?	A weakness however is that it's difficult to control confounding variables such as other factors which may have affected resident's happiness (e.g. the affluence of the nursing home) which decreases internal validity
How does the nature of the nursing home affect generalizability?	The affluence of the nursing home decreases generalizability as the facilities in this nursing home may not be available to everyone
Is the research a true field experiment?	Another problem is whether the research was actually a true field experiment because in a true lab/field experiment, participants should be randomly allocated the floors to be RIG/CG. If this is not the case, then strictly speaking, causal relationships can't be drawn - L+R randomly allocated the floors to be RIG/CG but they really should have randomly allocated individual participants to be either in the RIG/CG but perhaps L+R didn't use this option because of the disruption it would have caused to the residents and the home.
How was reliability demonstrated in this experiment?	Reliability was demonstrated by the reasonably close correlations (0.61 for the RIG and 0.68 for the CG) between the observations made by the two nurses
How does the sample composition affect population validity?	Another potential problem is that the population validity is questionable as the sample was gynocentric and perhaps lacks generalisability but it could be argued that it reflect the differences in the number of men and women in this age group and in residential care
What are the ethical issues in this research?	Ethics is a major problem with this study as the RIG benefitted from their participation whereas CG actually got worse – this isn’t fair. The residents were also unaware that they were participating in the research so didn’t give fully informed consent. This is a significant problem when you consider that the research (unknowingly) encompassed their whole life in the residential home, they couldn’t escape it or opt out.
What reasons may override the fact that ethical guidelines were breached for this research?	But does the end justify the means? This research clearly shows how the psychological well-being of residents can be affected by just minor changes in their perceived ability to control their living conditions. The results are important as it suggests how both the quality and quantity of life of those in residential care can be enhanced.
What were Langer and Rodin's (1977) findings?	18 months later, went to see how participants were doing; before expt, 25% mortality rate for patients each year RIG = decreased mortality to 15% CG = increased mortality to 30%
How does L+R(1977) findings support L+R?	SUPPORTS claim that psychological/physical health, social activity, happiness increases life expectancy because of indirect/direct effect of having control. Perceived control affected mortality rate.
What were Conen (1993) et al's findings?	deliberately exposed pps to cold virus; CG not exposed to cold virus significant positive correlation to condition exposed to cold virus with those stressed (lack of control)
How does Conen (1993) et al's research support L+R?	SUPPORTS L+R as lack of control affected immunity to cold which suggests there’s a relationship between perceived control and physical symptoms of illness. This suggest that it's not too far-fetched to believe that perceived control can influence some of the physical effects of ageing
What did Wurm et al (2007) find?	examined data from German aging study from 1000 participants negative correlation between low levels of control and high levels of illness
How does Wurm et al's (2007) research develop L+R's findings?	DEVELOPS L+R as shows relationship between illness and lack of control. Also shows other elements such as sense of control and stereotypes (cognitive elements) about ageing have an impact on illness and this is important in predicting physical health of elderly.
What did Savell (1991) find?	Found no sig difference between choice and no-choice groups in an experiment in terms of physical well-being or leisure satisfaction.
What explanation could be proposed for Savell's (1991) research which contradicts L+R?	Possible explanation for this is that the choice of enhanced activities didn’t give individuals a significantly enhanced sense of personal control

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