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Good places for ageing in place : development of objective built environment measures for investigating links with older people's wellbeing
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Burton, Elizabeth J., Mitchell, Lynne and Stride, Chris (2011) Good places for ageing in place : development of objective built environment measures for investigating links with older people's wellbeing. BMC Public Health, Vol.11 (No.1). p. 839. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-11-839 ISSN 1471-2458.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-839
Abstract
Background: There is renewed interest in the role of the built environment in public health. Relatively little
research to date investigates its impact on healthy ageing. Ageing in place has been adopted as a key strategy for
coping with the challenges of longevity. What is needed is a better understanding of how individual characteristics
of older people’s residential environments (from front door to wider neighbourhood) contribute to their wellbeing,
in order to provide the basis for evidence-based housing/urban design and development of interventions. This
research aimed to develop a tool to objectively measure a large range of built environment characteristics, as the
basis for a preliminary study of potential relationships with a number of ‘place-related’ functional, emotional and
social wellbeing constructs.
Methods: Through a review of urban design literature, design documents, and existing measures, a new tool, the
NeDeCC (Neighbourhood Design Characteristics Checklist) was developed. It was piloted, refined, and its reliability
validated through inter-rater tests. A range of place-related wellbeing constructs were identified and measured
through interviews with 200 older people living in a wide variety of rural-urban environments and different types
of housing in England. The NeDeCC was used to measure the residential environment of each participant, and
significant bivariate relationships with wellbeing variables were identified.
Results: The NeDeCC was found to have convincing face and construct validity and good inter-rater and test/
retest reliability, though it would benefit from use of digital data sources such as Google Earth to eliminate the
need for on-site survey. The significant relationships found in the study suggest that there may be characteristics
of residential environments of potential relevance for older people’s lives that have been overlooked in research to
date, and that it may be worthwhile to question some of the assumptions about where and how older people
want to live (e.g. villages seem to be positive). They also point to the importance of considering non-linear
relationships.
Conclusions: The NeDeCC provides the basis for generation of evidence-based design guidance if it is used in
prospective controlled studies or ‘natural experiments’ in the future. Ultimately, this will facilitate the creation of
better places for ageing in place.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Engineering > Engineering Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Health and Social Studies |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Older people -- Housing -- Great Britain, Older people -- Health and hygiene -- Great Britain, Housing and health -- Great Britain, City planning -- Great Britain | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | BMC Public Health | ||||
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. | ||||
ISSN: | 1471-2458 | ||||
Official Date: | 1 November 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.11 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Page Range: | p. 839 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2458-11-839 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 18 December 2015 | ||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 18 December 2015 | ||||
Funder: | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) | ||||
Grant number: | GR/S29102/01 (EPSRC) |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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