Sonja Teupen

Dr. Sonja Teupen serves as Group Leader at DZNE Witten, specializing in methodological approaches for dementia-focused health services research. Her work spans both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, research data management, and implementation of AI tools in research activities.

Her research focuses on understanding the subjective perspectives of people with dementia through exploratory investigations of:

• How people with dementia experience their illness and daily lives (lived experience)
• How they view themselves within their living environment
• How these perspectives influence their actions and decision-making

Dr. Teupen addresses methodological challenges inherent in dementia research including working with small convenience samples, non-normal data distributions, nominal and ordinal scale measurements, and vulnerable populations. Her quantitative work advances concepts in nursing research and tests complex interventions, while her qualitative work examines organizational structures, subjective viewpoints, and interpersonal interactions in dementia care.

She leads significant research projects including:

• STELDA - Stigmatization due to dementia: Experiences and effects in the lifeworld of people with younger onset dementia
• Dementia Mindset - Research on dementia mindsets of nursing staff in residential elderly care

As coordinator of the MethodenForum Witten, she provides a platform for methodological reflection in qualitative dementia-specific care research across institutional boundaries. Her work ensures research quality at the Witten site through appropriate method selection for complex care constellations and adaptation of data collection methods to diverse target groups.