What Conversation Topics are Meaningful to People with Aphasia? A qualitative study (Buxton, 2024)

Devane, N., Buxton, S., Fox, C., Marshall, J., Staunton, D., Whiddett, J., Wilson, S., Hilari, K.

Aphasiology, Sep2024; 38(9):1550-1567.

Speech and language therapists apply word finding therapies for people with aphasia with good outcomes on treated words but limited evidence of generalisation to untreated words. As generalisation cannot be assumed, there is a need to select words for therapy that are meaningful to people with aphasia. This study sought the views of people with aphasia to inform the stimuli for a word finding in conversation treatment. To this end, the research question was: What conversation topics do people with aphasia find most meaningful to talk about? This qualitative study used focus groups to identify meaningful conversation topics across a sample of 12 people with chronic aphasia (two groups of six). Participants were recruited from three community aphasia groups. The focus groups were videoed and transcribed. The transcription was analysed using framework analysis.

A consensus decision process was then used by researchers to identify the themes with high agreement. Twenty conversation topics were generated. Consensus was that eight topics were meaningful. The three topics rated most meaningful were 1) family and friends, 2) food and drink, and 3) living with aphasia. Two topics reached consensus as not meaningful. Ten topics did not reach consensus. The conversation topics, 'family and friends', 'food and drink' and 'living with aphasia' were most meaningful to this sample of people with aphasia. Using therapy stimuli from these conversation topics has the potential to create meaningful treatments