Exploring the specific field of care robot orientation generates many questions regarding the meaning, content and how it should be conducted. The issue is important due to the general digitalisation and implementation of welfare technology and care robots. The aim of the study was to explore perceptions of care robot orientation from the potential users' perspective. Data were collected by focus group interviews in Finland, Germany and Sweden. In all three countries, potential user groups were represented: older adults, relatives, professional caregivers and care service managers. A qualitative descriptive method was used for analysing data. The data revealed three aspects of care robot orientation: (1) What care robot orientation is, (2) Who needs it and by Whom it should be given and (3) How it should be performed. The need for care robot orientation is general in society. In the absence of knowledge about care robots, it is nearly impossible to know what to ask for or actually seek information about. Therefore, care robot orientation must be founded on agile implementation planning for care robots, with a firm basis in trustworthy knowledge and information and respecting individuals' wishes. This also gives rise to an ethical challenge when care robots are offered to people having reduced decision-making ability (dementia, cognitive impairment), along with the issue of who then should make the decision. The mapping of the What, Who/Whom and How aspects of care robot orientation offers a foundation for the creation of orientation models, which might facilitate structured and goal-oriented care robot orientation strategies.
Despite discernible improvements in the last decades, speeding is still a pertinent problem for road safety, fuel efficiency, and greenhouse gas mitigation. In order to understand individual speeding decisions, we need a better understanding of who speeds. In our paper, we test whether individuals' general pace of life is associated with speeding decisions. We use a novel speed-choice experiment that confronts participants with a scenario in which they repeatedly decide between driving fast or slow. This decision is associated with different accident risks. Before the experiment, each participant's pace of life was measured. Our results show that individuals with a slower pace of life are more likely to choose slow in the experiment and are also more likely to switch to slow, even when they had success by driving fast in the preliminary round. Therefore, individuals' pace of life may contribute to our understanding of speeding.
This paper explores Finnish, German and Swedish older adults' perceptions of a future welfare service with increased use of welfare technologies, specifically care robots. The issues are the rapid digitalization and development of health and welfare technology, which presently is mainly technology driven (not need or user driven), and the demographic challenge. The aim of the study was to explore older adults' perception of the future use of welfare technology or care robots. A qualitative approach with focus group discussions was employed, followed by thematic analysis. The results are presented in four overall themes: the impact on daily life for older adults and professional caregivers, codes of practice and terms of use, dissemination of information and knowledge, and conditions for successful implementation. There were significant differences in the informants' attitudes toward and knowledge about care robots. However, the informants' attitudes appeared to change during the focus groups and in general, became more positive. Authentic needs, which care robots could support, refer to independence, safety and security, and the ability to manage or ease daily life or working life. The results suggest that older adults, after receiving relevant information, were open to the idea of being supported by care robots in their daily lives.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.