Emergence and Evolution of Social Self-management of Parkinson's Disease, Greater Boston Metropolitan Area, 5 states, 2013-2019

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Please note that as of June 2023, Sarah D. Gunnery, PhD is the current Principal Investigator of this data collection.
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The Emergence and Evolution of Social Self-Management of Parkinson's Disease study (SocM-PD) is a mixed-method (quantitative-qualitative) prospective cohort study of how people with Parkinson's disease and their primary caregiver (as available) naturalistically manage chronic disease, wellness and social life in their home and community.
Researchers define social self-management as the practices and experiences that ensure personal social comfort while supporting mental and physical well-being. Articulating this model will guide research to identify social factors that are deleterious to or protective of quality of life when living with chronic disease. Parkinson's Disease offers a model for studying the effect of physical disease on the social self management of daily life when physical symptoms affect fundamental social capacities. The overall objective is to understand the emergence and evolution of the trajectories of the self-management of the social lives of people living with Parkinson's disease. The central hypothesis is that expressive capacity predicts systematic change in the pattern of social self-management and quality of life outcomes. Demographic variables include age, gender, ethnicity, income, marital status, education, and employment.