Evaluating and Improving Engagement of People with Lived Experience in Dementia Research

The ISTAART Partnering with Research Participants Professional Interest Area (PIA) invites you to a four-part learning series titled Evaluating and Improving Engagement of People with Lived Experience in Dementia Research.

The goal of this series is to build capacity and skills of researchers to conduct evaluations of research/projects that engage people with lived experience. Over the entire meeting series, each participant will take part in both didactic learning and discussion sessions that help them to develop an evaluation plan  for a research/project that engages people with lived experience of dementia in order to improve their work.

Learning objectives for participants include:

• Develop or enhance knowledge of basic approaches to evaluation and improvement
• Build skills in using an approach to evaluation that can be applied in participants’ own work
• Develop or enhance knowledge of various data collection methods used in evaluation
• Identify effective and relevant data collection methods for participants’ own evaluation purposes
• Address ethical and methodological issues in order to be dementia friendly in the evaluation
• Articulate an evaluation and improvement plan

Each virtual meeting will be 90 minutes. Sessions will include short didactic “theory bursts”, small group peer feedback conversations, and large group discussions. Attendees should aim to participate in all four meetings to gain the most impact and benefit from the training. Participants will be expected to individually complete brief pre-work for each session in order to incrementally develop their own evaluation plan. All four meetings (not small group discussions) will be recorded, for those who may be unable to attend a session.

Our schedule is:

• Session #1: Thursday October 30, 2025 at 3 p.m. C.T.
• Session #2: Wednesday December 10, 2025 at 10 a.m. C.T.
• Session #3: Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 10 a.m. C.T.
• Session #4: Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 3 p.m. C.T.

Registration for the series is required.  Once registered, a calendar invitation for each session will be sent to you.