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Life balance of youths

Life balance

Introduction
Life balance encompasses the balance that individuals experience in all activities and engagements in which they (want to) be involved (such as work, school, family, social life, hobbies) (Matuska & Christiansen, 2009; Matuska, 2010; Wagman, 2012). Youth with and without health problems may experience a disturbed life balance during the course of life, which may prevent them from fulfilling certain roles (e.g. fellow student, sports buddy). However, there is a lack of assessment tools to map life balance amongst youths. Moreover, there is little research on the strategies that occupational therapists can offer them to find and maintain a good life balance (Wagman, Håkansson, & Björklund, 2012; Wagman et al., 2015; Stambulova et al., 2015). The development of mobile applications in support of health care services seems to be very useful, especially for youths.

Goal

  1. Developing/adapting an assessment instrument for mapping the life balance of youths with psychiatric problems, youths with cerebral palsy (CP) and healthy youths for control purposes.
  2. Developing a telecoaching intervention for the optimisation of the life balance within these target groups.

Method
By means of a literature research, interviews and focus groups, an assessment tool to map life balance tailored to youths with and without disabilities is adapted or developed and validated. Next, via a consensus method (more specific the Delphi process), the content and form for a telecoaching intervention to optimise life balance for these target groups will be determined and a mobile application will be developed. The usability of the telecoaching application is evaluated in a clinical study of the client groups.

Relevance 
The results of this project can contribute to the optimisation of the care provided by occupational therapists. If the telecoaching application turns out to be usable, it can be applied and researched on a broader scale.