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This paper explores the varied meanings and lived experiences of older people with dementia, in relation to everyday technologies in public spaces outside the home, through re-analysis of qualitative data generated from research that focused on the use of technology in supporting people with dementia to carry on with their everyday outside activities. The data have been re-analysed to critically examine how people with memory loss manage being outside in both familiar and unfamiliar public environments. In doing so the authors explore how technologies mediate between the physical and social environment in which people with dementia live. This paper highlights the importance of a neglected space within dementia research, namely the outside public environment. Although the outside environment and activities that take place in that space, for some, are curtailed, for others the physical and social security of familiar environments enables them to carry on with everyday activities in this public realm. Outside space can be both therapeutic and frightening and this paper demonstrates that people with dementia can sometimes feel out of place in public space. It however also shows the variety of ways people with dementia use everyday technologies to manage 'feeling out of place'.

Peer support is well established in fields such as the disability movement and mental health and is increasingly recognised as one way of enabling support by and for people with a diagnosis of dementia and their immediate carers. It was central to the implementation of the National Dementia Strategy (NDS) for England, when 40 demonstration sites were established. This mixed-methods study included in-depth qualitative interviews with people living with dementia (n = 101) and staff/stakeholders (n = 82) at 8 of the 40 sites. Data analysis was a five-stage process: coding framework developed (using 25 transcripts); further development of the framework (using a further 70 transcripts); development of emerging themes; modelling of themes and verification of models based on the entire data set. Peer support had positive emotional and social impact that was rooted in identification with others, a commonality of experience and reciprocity of support. There was also a contrast between the quality of peer support and support from professionals. This emphasises the significance of lived experience and promoting a strength-based approach to interpersonal support that is enabling and challenges a deficit approach to understanding dementia.

Health services research has been dominated by the biomedical paradigm and positivism, and the funding cultures of biomedicine have dictated the choice of method used by researchers. Social science paradigms, however, have been recognised as increasingly important within health services research and both quantitative and qualitative methods are accepted as appropriate. Older people with dementia have usually been excluded from or marginalised in studies about dementia because of traditional assumptions about the ability or appropriateness of people with dementia to act as participants or respondents. The choice of research method should be driven by theory and not by ideological or political prescription. Theory-driven pluralistic approaches to method will facilitate participation of people with dementia in research through the valuing of personhood. There are no unique methodological challenges in researching dementia. Rather, the complex nature of dementia and dementia care highlight the methodological challenges of investigating complex social phenomena.

In order to reduce unsafe wandering high quality research is needed to determine the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions that are practically and ethically acceptable to users. It is important to establish the views of people with dementia on the acceptability of such interventions prior to evaluating their effectiveness through complex randomised controlled trials.

ObjectiveNational and global dementia plans have focused on the research ambition to develop a cure or disease‐modifying therapy by 2025, with the initial focus on investment in drug discovery approaches. We set out to develop complementary research ambitions in the areas of prevention, diagnosis, intervention, and care and strategies for achieving them.MethodsAlzheimer's Society facilitated a taskforce of leading UK clinicians and researchers in dementia, UK funders of dementia research, people with dementia, and carer representatives to develop, using iterative consensus methodology, goals and recommendations to advance dementia research.ResultsThe taskforce developed 5 goals and 30 recommendations. The goals focused on preventing future cases of dementia through risk reduction, maximising the benefit of a dementia diagnosis, improving quality of life, enabling the dementia workforce to improve practice, and optimising the quality and inclusivity of health and social care systems. Recommendations addressed gaps in knowledge and limitations in research methodology or infrastructure that would facilitate research in prioritised areas. A 10‐point action plan provides strategies for delivering the proposed research agenda.ConclusionsBy creating complementary goals for research that mirror the need to find effective treatments, we provide a framework that enables a focus for new investment and initiatives. This will support a broader and more holistic approach to research on dementia, addressing prevention, surveillance of population changes in risk and expression of dementia, the diagnostic process, diagnosis itself, interventions, social support, and care for people with dementia and their families.

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Lack of insight or impaired awareness of deficits in people with Alzheimer's disease or other dementias (AD) is a relatively neglected area of study. The terms are widely used in professional and everyday life without a shared understanding of what lack of insight means to health professionals, informal caregivers or people with dementia. Content analysis of 49 psychiatry or psychology texts, in which insight or a synonym is mentioned, found lack of clarity in definitions and their operationalization. In general, insight is defined as the ability to understand one's own problems. Lack of insight therefore is a professional judgement grounded in the medicalization of dementia. People labelled as lacking insight of their dementia will consequently experience more acutely depersonalization, loss of independence, loss of social and political rights and they will have their behaviour individualized. Caregivers' understanding of the loss of insight may influence the way they deal with risk during caregiving.