Towards a consumer-informed research agenda for aphasia: preliminary work

AbstractPurpose: Person-centeredness in clinical practice incorporates the values of clients into a shared decision-making approach. The values of person-centeredness can be extended into the realm of research when the views of consumers towards relevant and important research topics are sought. Work in other health domains has shown the importance of gathering consumer views on health care research, which ultimately extends into health care policy and practice. The purpose of this paper is to report methods used successfully to gather the views of individuals living with aphasia on research topics they view as important. Methods: The project is founded on principles of community-based participatory research. Using a modified nominal group technique, members of an aphasia support group generated a list of research topics. Results: The Aphasia Support Group identified twenty-two potential research questions. Although a majority (59%) of the research questions generated by persons with aphasia could be addr...