Living Lab at Home

For many families, participating in research is not accessible because of the stress, distance, cost, or other burdens that make it hard to come to a research lab or hospital. Our research group is developing the “Living Lab at Home”, which will offer home-based data collection to make research participation accessible for a wide range of children and youth. With advances in digital technology, we can answer questions about emotions, symptoms, daily function, sleep, pain/comfort, and well-being in the real-world setting of the home.

To design this new way of doing research, we worked together with families that had lived experience with severe neurologic impairment to come up with recommendations on how to make in-home research more accessible. Now we’re looking for Canadian families of children with severe neurologic impairment to test out the methods we came up with!

This study would involve your family taking part in 14 days of in-home data collection. This would include answering questions on a smartphone, your child wearing an activity monitor, and taking saliva samples. There’s a chance for all caregivers and even siblings to take part! At the end of the study, we would do a short interview to hear your family’s feedback about your experience. The call would be recorded for our study records. Your family would receive up to $60 in gift cards for taking part.