Background: Intimacy and sexuality are essential aspects of quality of life for older adults in longterm care. Numerous tools and interventions are available to support healthcare professionals in their conversations about intimacy and sexuality but they are often unfamiliar with these, or do not know when or how to use them. Aim: To develop a tool to help healthcare professionals choose from existing interventions to facilitate conversations with older adults on the subject of intimacy and sexuality. Methods: A design study, comprising five substudies and 16 workshops, was carried out in inpatient and outpatient settings for older adults. Participants were healthcare and design professionals, older adults and their relatives, undergraduate students and researchers. Data collection and analysis took place in several iterations, with insights from one phase guiding the design of the next. Findings: A paper brochure and a digital knowledge programme (IntiME) was developed to inform the selection of interventions and tools to initiate conversations about intimacy and sexuality with older adults. Initial experiences with IntiME suggest it can support healthcare professionals in this area. Conclusions: The IntiME tool has the potential to improve person-centred care around intimacy and sexuality by matching the personal characteristics of healthcare professionals and older adults with available interventions and tools. Further research into experiences with the use of IntiME is warranted. Implications for practice: • IntiME has the potential to improve person-centred care by matching the personal characteristics of staff and older adults with available interventions and tools • Co-creation with older adults and staff plays an important part in designing tools for personcentred care • Using IntiME may help staff become more aware of their own needs and thereby enhance competence in conversations about intimacy and sexuality
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Current understandings of similarity with media characters often focus on visible attributes including gender and race, yet overlook deep-level characteristics such as personality, attitudes, and experiences. In the present research, we address this limitation and develop and validate the Character Recognizability Scale (CRS), which captures different ways in which audiences can recognize themselves in characters. Based on a previous interview study, we formulated 26 scale items. Subsequently, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, we used a sample of 219 university students in the Netherlands to conduct an exploratory factor analysis. We determined the reliability, as well as criterion and convergent validity of the entire scale and the retained factors. In Study 2, we used a sample of 247 respondents in the United States to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis and replicate the results of the reliability and validity analyses. Based on Study 1, we kept 20 items. In both studies, the overall CRS scale as well as its subscales for Personality Recognizability (CRS-p), Attitudinal Recognizability (CRS-a), and Experiential Recognizability (CRS-e) showed a good internal consistency. They also showed criterion validity through an association with perceived similarity. Finally, the CRS and its subscales correlated positively with media engagement and exposure measures, thus demonstrating convergent validity.