{"id":113,"date":"2019-07-20T22:02:55","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T22:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/?p=113"},"modified":"2020-05-27T17:31:34","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T17:31:34","slug":"communicating-on-what-matters-most-researching-an-intergenerational-board-game-for-family-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/communicating-on-what-matters-most-researching-an-intergenerational-board-game-for-family-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"Communicating on What Matters Most: Researching an Intergenerational Board Game for Family Sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Meuser, Ph.D., Director, Center for Excellence in Aging and Health<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever wondered how you\nwill be remembered? Do your family members from other generations know what you\nhold most dear? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the focus of some exciting new research through the UNE Center for Excellence in Aging & Health (CEAH). The project team includes Principal Investigator, Dr. Tom Meuser, Professor of Social Work and CEAH Director, Co-Investigator Dr. Regi Robnett, Professor of Occupational Therapy, and three MSW graduate students: Amanda Basso (’19), Corey Carmichael (’19), and Josef Kijewski (’19).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game is called \u201cFamily Get\nTogether\u201d or FGT for short. Its purpose is to bring together family groups\ntogether to talk about their lives, values, and beliefs, while also having fun!\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
UNE students and colleagues play FGT during a video shoot with a local TV reporter in December, 2018. Each brought copies of the pre-prototype home for the holidays. Play experiences informed the development of the full working prototype currently being studied. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

FGT is organized around a shared\njourney to a family reunion. Designed for multigenerational family groups, it\ncan also be played among friends and even strangers. What matters is the\ntalking, sharing and mutual enjoyment of the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Players follow paths of different\ncolored tiles. Each color corresponds to a question or activity. Some are for\nthe player who landed there, others involve the whole group. You never know if\nyou will be asked your favorite food or what you believe about death, love,\netc. The fun is in the discovery!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Meuser first mapped out the game in his mind in 2014. His research on legacy beliefs in aging<\/a> in recent years solidified his plans for the game, and he took the development plunge soon after his arrival at UNE last September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, he and his team have\ndeveloped and piloted a \u201cpre-prototype\u201d (i.e., a very basic playable version)\nand are now ready to launch their first validation study on a full working\nprototype. They are recruiting multigenerational family groups to help in this\neffort now, in fact. Children as young as 8 years may take part. View the flyer<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Tom Deschenes (top left) is one of Maine’s most successful game developers. His game, Quest for the Antidote, has an international following. He gave Amanda Basso and Tom Meuser some terrific advice and encouragement over lunch. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The game has its roots in Dr.\nMeuser\u2019s work on narrative gerontology and life review over the past dozen\nyears. Asking older interviewees about their legacies is part of the process. \u201cAs\nthe window of life begins to close, it is natural to consider beliefs about\ndeath and what about us lives on after we are gone from this earth,\u201d said Dr.\nMeuser. \u201cOlder adults appreciate opportunities to talk about both subjects. Death\nisn\u2019t scary for most, and having someone to share about their legacy can be a\nreal comfort\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all leave legacies upon death.\nSome legacies we know, others we desire, and still others will happen without\nus ever knowing. Despite growing up in families and keeping in touch with\nsiblings, parents, etc, it is surprising how little some people know about what\nmatters most to those closest to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what Dr. Meuser\u2019s\nresearch on legacy beliefs shows. He compared what older parents believe about\ntheir legacy with how their adult children see it. Even in pairs who felt very\nclose to each other, overlap in their shared understanding were shockingly low.\n\u201cNo matter how well you get along parent to child, child to parent, there\u2019s\nprobably a lot you can know about each other. It often just takes asking,\u201d says\nDr. Meuser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is often difficult to start\nsuch conversations, however. Student team member, Corey Carmichael has seen\nthis first hand: \u201cMy current internship is in hospice. I\u2019m seeing families\nengaging in these discussions, often in rather rushed ways towards the end. Our\ngame provides a structure to do this sooner and in a more inviting way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to help? Consider volunteering yourself and at least three other members of your extended family to play the game while being video recorded (i.e., for later study of interactions, themes, etc.), and then answer a few focus groups questions after. This is the study that Dr. Meuser and his team are conducting now. They need to confirm that the game is both fun and promotes the kind of communication they hypothesize it will. The only way to know is to observe families in play, and then look at the process on video later. You can view the IRB approved flyer for this research here<\/a>. Or contact Dr. Meuser by email (tmeuser@une.edu<\/a>) or by phone (207-221-4140) to learn more about his work in life review, game development and the celebration of personal legacies as we age. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Meuser, Ph.D., Director, Center for Excellence in Aging and Health Have you ever wondered how …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}