Developing a weighting system to evaluate physical and cognitive stimulation and safety in older adults' living environments

The interdisciplinary HabitAge project, conducted at the University of Liège (Belgium), aims to study the extent to which the living environment of older people can have an impact on their physical and cognitive stimulation, as well as their safety. As part of this project, a weighting system has been developed to assign a specific weight to each item and sub-item of the living environment of older adults, reflecting their contribution to the following three dimensions: physical stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and safety. To develop the weighting system, we involved several stakeholders, including older people as well as experts in ageing and/or housing from five disciplines: architecture, universal design, medicine, psycho-social, and home care. Data collection was performed in two phases. In the first phase, 13 experts participated: two from each discipline and three older adults. They were asked to weight the important items to be considered to assess an older adult’s level of physical stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and safety. Each item was weighted using a Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all important to consider) to 10 (very important to consider), with the order of the items randomized for each participant. The second phase involved 16 experts, including the original 13 from the first phase, plus one additional expert from each of the following disciplines: architecture, medicine, and psycho-social. In this phase, they were asked to weigh the influence (increase, decrease, no effect) of the sub-items on older adult’s physical stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and safety. Each sub-item was weighted using a Likert scale ranging from -5 (strong decrease) to +5 (strong increase), with 0 indicating a neutral effect. The final weight of each sub-item as the product of the median of the item from Phase 1 (ranging from 1 to 10) and the median of the corresponding sub-items from Phase 2 (ranging from -5 to 5). Furthermore, when experts assigned a score between –5 and –1 or between +1 and +5, they were asked to specify whether the influence of the sub-items was beneficial or harmful (with respect to seniors’ stimulation and safety), or whether it varied depending on the profile of the older adults. In the case of a neutral score (0), they were asked to indicate whether this meant that the sub-item had no relationship with the domain being assessed (physical stimulation, cognitive stimulation and safety), or whether its effect varied depending on the older adult’s profile - which could justify the use of a neutral score despite the potential for very different effects. This record contains nine databases (one for each domain in Phase 1, one for each domain in Phase 2, and one for each domain by type of influence). The domains represent physical stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and safety. HabitAge project members will review requests for full access on a case-by-case basis.