Using Narratives to Understand Older People's Decision-Making Processes

Despite the availability of health and social care services designed to support people in their own homes, older people often under-use or refuse these. It is now acknowledged that this phenomenon contributes to older people being admitted to hospital and long-term care in circumstances that could be avoided. In order to understand how the uptake of supportive and preventative services can be improved the first author (JT), supervised by GG and SD, developed a constructivist inquiry to explore what factors enhance or bar service use. This paper describes how narratives were used not only to help indentify decision- and choice-making influences, but also as a way of enhancing the hermeneutic processes associated with constructivism