Background and Objectives
Various aspects of the neighborhood environment have been shown to correlate with older adults’ health. Socio-ecological models of health posit that interventions in the living environment can influence population health. Yet, there are no scales to comprehensively measure older people’s experiences of their neighborhoods especially in dense urban contexts. This study analyzes the psychometric properties and factor structure of a holistic measure of Older People’s Neighborhood Experience (OpenX) to understand constituent factors of residential satisfaction and well-being in dense urban contexts.
Research Design and Methods
Participants were 1,011 community-dwelling older adults aged 50 and older in Singapore. Face-to-face interviews were conducted. Questions were drawn to measure physical and social aspects of the neighborhood as well as sociodemographic variables. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to obtain a shorter version; content validity, internal consistency, and external validity were assessed.
Results
The OpenX has a 4-dimensional structure, explaining 45.5% of the variance of neighborhood experience. They are communal affordance, embeddedness, environment pleasantness, and time outdoors. Good reliability and validity were found, including Cronbach’s alpha of 0.827. The correlation between neighborhood experience and objectively measured proximity to parks and fitness corners approached significance (p = .082).
Discussion and Implications
The 16-item OpenX demonstrated good psychometric properties. With reference to the transdisciplinary neighborhood health framework, it is useful for assessing older adults’ neighborhood environment, identifying neighborhoods for pilot population health interventions, and understanding how the neighborhood environment affects older adults’ health.
In the dense and hybrid urban conditions emerging globally, urban space is seen not only as a precious and contested commodity, but also as one of the key vehicles for achieving socially, environmentally and economically sustainable urban living. Therefore, the conventional ways of designing, utilizing and managing public spaces need to be revisited and re-conceptualized, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Drawing from contemporary theories and concepts addressing the quality of public spaces, this paper outlines the discourse analysis used to develop an integrated Urban Space Framework to systematically classify, assess, analyze and guide the design of urban spaces in highdensity contexts.
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