For Michael Yung, a psychology master's student at the University of Otago, finding healthy ''control'' participants for his research into the cognitive impact of Parkinson's Disease has been a major challenge.
During the past year, he has found and tested 52 Parkinson's patients but has only been able to work with 27 healthy people as controls.
''A lot of my time in the past year has been spent chasing people up - it's harder than it sounds,'' Mr Yung said.
The study participants were given paper-based tasks to check for cognitive deficits, along with computer tasks to test reaction times and spatial recognition.
Finding healthy people to do the tests sounds easy, but the task was made much more difficult by the fact
the control subjects had to be of the same age, gender, handedness and educational level as the Parkinson's patient participants.
The controls also had to have no neurological or psychological condition, past or present.
''I had about 100 people volunteer, but unfortunately, for various reasons, we could only use some of them,'' Mr Yung said.
''Matching all those different factors has proven very difficult.''
Mr Yung's involvement in the study comes to an end at the end of this month and he will then set to work on completing his Masters thesis.
The research project will continue, however, in the hands of fellow master's student Sam Flannery, who will be revisiting participants to see if there has been any cognitive change over the past year.
Mr Flannery will also be working to find more control participants.
Mr Yung said finding healthy people for research studies was an issue for researchers at the university's Brain Health Research centre, as ''hundreds'' were needed.
The cognitive study being undertaken by Mr Yung and Mr Flannery is being done in conjunction with researchers at the School of Medicine, who are searching for bio-markers for Parkinson's Disease.
It was hoped these, in conjunction with cognitive testing, could help with diagnosis or early screening for Parkinson's.
