Finding a balance: The Carolinas Conversation Collection

Abstract

The Carolinas Conversations Collection is a password-protected digital collection of transcribed audio and video recordings of conversations about health, supported by the National Libraries of Medicine. It has two cohorts: 125 unimpaired multiethnic older speakers with any of 12 chronic conditions and a longitudinal set of 400 conversations with 125 persons having dementia. Information about health literacy, health status, and cognitive function requires high standards for privacy and confidentiality, and restricted data use agreements. Since contents are housed in an adaptation of the well-established ONZE Miner, users can search and perform online analysis of sound, word or syntax with increasing specificity.