Intergenerational Reminiscence and Digital Storytelling

The older and young adult participants will be randomly assigned into the intervention (reminiscence) or control (social wellness) groups and then be randomly matched as dyads within each group. Older adults in the intervention group will receive 10 sessions of life-review with the trained young adult volunteers (1-1.5 hours each week for 10 weeks). During weeks 1-6, a life history interview will be carried out with different themes in each week: major turning points in life (W1), family history (W2), life/career accomplishments (W3), history of loves and hates (W4), stress experiences (W5), and meaning and purpose of life (W6). During weeks 7-10, the dyads will develop the DST together using tablets already owned by the UTA School of Social Work. The contents of sessions 7-10 will be structured as: outline/script, plan and storyboard (W7), film and record (W8), evaluate, integrate and finalize (W9), and publish/share (W10).

Older adults in the control group will have general social wellness discussion with the young adult volunteers, instead of structured reminiscence guidelines. The topics are: diet and health (week 1); exercise/activity and health (week 2); emotions and health (week 3); religious/spiritual practices and health (week 4); family/friend relationships and health (week 5); and social activities/engagement and health (week 6). For weeks 7-10, instead of DST, the young adult volunteer will work with the older adult to create an unstructured, non-digital record of the social visit related to wellness in later life (e.g. wellness scrapbook/journal).