Engaging university aging research in a continuing care retirement community by Michael J. Logan, MHA, CASP

Alex Francis gets to know his research participants—and their spouses—better than most scientists would. So, while it could have been idle chat for a participant’s wife to mention that her husband was getting a new hearing aid, it raised a red flag for Francis.

Participants don’t often know how changes in their lives might affect Francis’s research outcomes. But for a scientist studying hearing and cognition, it could have been disastrous for a participant to change hearing aids in the middle of a study. Had Francis, like many scientists, kept his distance from his research participants, he may have never known about the new hearing aid and the way it would have affected his study.