Falls Prevention in the Visually Impaired (Violet Study)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Visually Impaired OLder people’s Exercise programme for falls prevention: a feasibility study
IRAS ID
143684
Contact name
Nicola Adams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Northumbria University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
TBC, TBC
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 3 months, 31 days
Research summary
Falls and fear of falling have a big impact on older people’s lives. Many people stop going out
altogether, and other people reduce their activity so that they are much less active than they used to
be. This seems to lead to a vicious circle, where the less people do, the less they are able to do, and
the more falling becomes an issue for them. This in turn has an impact on their social life, and on their
general well-being. From existing research we know that exercise programmes can help this. It seems
to help people build up their confidence and their physical strength and stamina. This can help make
them less likely to fall, more likely to keep going, and more likely to have a better quality of life.
However there are a lot of old people with poor sight and blindness who cannot easily access or join
in these kinds of exercise programmes. We aim to work with a group of people with vision problems
and adapt an exercise programme for falls prevention. As this has only been tested in sighted people,
we will need to find out if it is possible to run a large research study (a randomised controlled trial) of
this programme through a so called feasibility study. We will start by working with a group of older
people who are visually impaired and health and exercise professionals to adapt the programme and
agree on ways of measuring how well it works (e.g. measuring confidence, number of falls, fear of
falling and general health) for those with sight loss. We will then carry out a pilot study of the exercise
programme in Newcastle and in Glasgow. Older people who are invited to take part will be
randomised to either receive our 12-week exercise programme or nothing, and be assessed at the
beginning and end of the exercise classes and after 6 months. However, in this feasibility study, the
main focus of our research will be to see if older people with sight loss are prepared to take part in a
randomised controlled trial, could join in and stick with our exercise programme, and complete the
assessments. We will do this through estimating recruitment and response rates and asking people
who stuck with it, and people who dropped out, what helped or hindered their involvement. The
reasons why they could, or couldn’t, will be used to further develop the programme, and a future study
would run a bigger trial of it. This will give us a chance to see if it does work, and if it is worth spending public money on.REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NE/0057
Date of REC Opinion
10 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion