Using Concept Mapping Methods to Define “Healthy Aging” in Anchorage, Alaska

Abstract

This exploratory research project captured a multidimensional model of healthy aging in Anchorage, Alaska, by utilizing the Concept Mapping (CM) methodology with a sample of 53 older adults (aged 55+), aging advocates, public health professionals, and senior service providers. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses were conducted to map the relationship between 100 aspects of healthy aging, resulting in 12 distinct concepts of healthy aging. Study participants identified both lifestyle factors and aspects of their environment, providing results that can inform future research and policy development. The perspectives of older adults are scarce in the literature, but how they conceptualize the factors that contribute to healthy aging can have profound influence on behaviors and health outcomes. In addition, CM is a little-used methodology in gerontology that fosters community capacity building, meaningful contributions, and trusting research partnerships. We also provide recommendations for using these methods with older adults.

Convivir (to Coexist) and Other Insights: Results From the Positive Aging for Latinos Study

“…Results indicated wide-ranging commonalties but important variations; service providers rated religion and spirituality as more important than the scholars did. Likewise, Howell et al (2021) used concept mapping to developed a locally contextualized definition of healthy aging among older adults living in the circumpolar North and in a later study, they asked participants to rank key components by importance and feasibility. Howell et al (2020) found that older adults ranked environmental features such as sidewalks with curb cuts as important, but less feasible than psychological and behavioral aspects of healthy aging.…”

Last mile research: a conceptual map

“…Concept mapping is a way of identifying essential components of a concept and then assembling these in a way that can help in conceptual understanding. As a study design, it has been used in many areas including hand hygiene [ 29 ], intimate partner violence [ 30 ], gender and higher education [ 31 ], healthy aging [ 32 ], medical education [ 33 ], community-based housing [ 34 ], health care management [ 35 ] and understanding health care access barriers [ 36 ], among others. Traditionally, concept mapping is done over a series of steps or stages using tools such as paper, posters, post-it-notes and markers to engage groups in the process of cooperative conceptualization.…”

Determining the importance and feasibility of various aspects of healthy ageing among older adults using concept mapping

“…Additionally, different societies may also place more or less weight on the various psychological, physiological, and social aspects of ageing, based on the local socio-cultural environment (Bowling, 2007; Young et al ., 2009; Fernandez-Ballestros et al ., 2010; Reichstadt et al ., 2010; Lewis, 2014; Ahn et al ., 2017; Tkatch et al ., 2017; Black and Hyer, 2019; Chen et al ., 2019). Since there is clearly a great degree of variation between how different groups of people define healthy ageing, there remains a need to create local holistic models of healthy ageing in socio-cultural context that engage a variety of stakeholders (Soellner et al ., 2017; Howell et al ., 2020; Trevino et al ., 2020).…”

“…Because CM is often used for conceptualising both the nature of difficult health problems and methods to resolve them (Trochim and Kane, 2005), this method is well-suited for the investigation of how stakeholders perceive importance and feasibility of healthy ageing in their community through a participatory framework (Rosas, 2012; Vaughn et al ., 2017). We utilised CM to define healthy ageing in Anchorage, Alaska in our previous work (Howell et al ., 2020) and here we present further usage of CM to elicit the importance and feasibility of 12 components of healthy ageing.…”

“…In our previous work, we created a local definition of healthy ageing in Anchorage, Alaska by eliciting the perspectives of older adults (aged 55+ years), public health professionals and other stakeholders ( see Howell et al ., 2020). Healthy ageing included access to affordable medical care, healthy food and physical activity, access to senior support services, positive attitudes and good mental health, appropriate housing options, lifelong learning, having a purpose in life, feeling a sense of physical and financial security, planning for the future, a physically accessible city, a community that values its elders and maintaining social relationships.…”