Mimetic words and nursing care level in the free description text of long-term care records

Abstract

The long-term care records keep the detailed information of daily life and behavior for the members in need of nursing care. In this paper, we conducted an analysis focused on the relationship between mimetic words in free description text of the records and nursing care level to demonstrate the real state and behavior of the people in each care level. As the results, text of milder level of care needed contains more active and positive type of mimetic words like don-don, wai-wai, whereas that of severer level of care needed contains dull and uncomfortable type of mimetic words like bon-yari. sowa-sowa. These results reveal that the mimetic words reflect the differences of people’s behavior in each care level. Further analysis focused on the mimetic words toward the massive text data should be effective to excavate the collective wisdom from long-term records.