Characteristics of the studies using realist evaluation to assess interventions that address psychosocial healthcare issues in older adults: a scoping review

Objectives Interventions to address psychosocial healthcare issues in older adults are increasing. Realist evaluation (RE) helps us understand how these interventions work for their issues. It is significant to obtain implications for further developing such research. We aimed to identify the characteristics of studies using RE to assess interventions that address psychosocial healthcare issues in older adults by mapping relevant literature.Design Scoping review.Data sources MEDLINE, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, ICHUSHI (a Japanese database) and Google Scholar were used for searches between 5 January 2022 and 4 January 2024.Eligibility criteria (1) Showing that most of the participants were older adults or their stakeholders; (2) stating in the research background or aim sections that the target interventions aimed at addressing older adults' psychosocial healthcare issues and (3) using RE to assess these interventions.Data extraction Data on country of origin, type of research, study design, qualitative data collection and analysis methods, desirable items for RE and intervention aims and purposes were extracted and summarised using descriptive statistics.Results Fifty-four studies were analysed. Most studies were conducted in the UK (54.5%). Mixed methods were used in 28 studies (51.9%), while only qualitative methods were used in 25 studies (46.2 %). Fourteen intervention aims and purposes were identified: improving dementia care, avoiding emergency admissions, preventing social isolation and promoting family involvement in the care of older adults.Conclusion RE is useful for promoting an understanding of how interventions work for addressing psychosocial healthcare issues in older adults. RE also promotes the updating of plausible theories that lead to improving interventions. Our findings show the implications of managing time and resources to address the challenge of RE's time and resource intensiveness and carefully considering the data collection methods to reduce burdens on older adults.