Interventionists
physical disabilities
The interventionists are trained young volunteers who are studying in a post-secondary institution (i.e., Tung Wah College). Tung Wah College requires students to attend community services for 40 h as a form of service learning, which is also a graduation requirement. Serving as a volunteer interventionist in this project will be counted as community service required by the college. The same volunteer will deliver the intervention to the same group of participants throughout the 6-week intervention period. A train-the-trainer program will be provided by the research team to the young volunteers. The program will provide standardized training to the volunteer interventionist on skills of delivering the intervention and establishing rapport with the participants (e.g., communication skills). The research officer will supervise each training session to ensure that the interventions are delivered identically across groups. The interventionists deliver the intervention in an interventionist-to-participant ratio of 1:3. To ensure good intervention fidelity, the young volunteers will be qualified to become interventionists in this program after they have completed a 2-h train-the-trainer program. The contents of the train-the-trainer cover the activities for operating the VR experience system, familiarizing with the standardized intervention implementation manual, as well as the essential communication skills with older people with physical disabilities. The research team will pay site visits to the research venue and observe the intervention by checking the implementation steps against the implementation manual. Regular research team meetings will be conducted to solve problems hindering the interventionists from following the intervention protocol.