Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Critically Appraised Topic

Degree Name

Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Department

Occupational Therapy

First Advisor

Anne Haskins

Second Advisor

Breann Lamborn

Third Advisor

Julie Grabanski/Devon Olson Lambert

Abstract

The focus for this critically appraised topic (CAT) is increasing the autonomy of homeless veterans through life-skills-based education programs. A review of existing literature found a gap of published research on this topic within occupational therapy and interdisciplinary research communities. There is a lack of experimentally designed research studies focusing on autonomy and community assistance programs utilizing life skills education training for or including the homeless veteran population. The level of evidence presented in the literature relating to this topic has been predominantly found to include non-experimental descriptive quantitative studies (Jones et al., 2021; Kline et al., 2021; Laan et al., 2020; Nichter et al., 2023; Tsai & Byrne, 2023), non-experimental correlational studies (Holder et al., 2023), and qualitative studies (Doris & Löfstrand, 2020; Greenberg et al., 2019) indicating a need for experimental and more rigorous studies. Additionally, many existing research utilizes the same national data set, The National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study (NHRVS), as a basis for statistical analysis (Nichter et al., 2023; Kline et al., 2021). Although the national data set yielded multiple avenues of analysis, the data was collected from two cohorts most recently surveyed in 2019 and 2020 indicating a need for a broader and more current sample.

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