Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Aging
Date Submitted: May 31, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: May 30, 2023 - Jun 14, 2023
Date Accepted: Aug 29, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The validity of a digital tool for self-assessment of the home to increase age-friendliness
ABSTRACT
Background:
Age-friendly environments in homes and communities play an important role in optimising the health and wellbeing of society. Older people have strong preferences of remaining at home as they get older. Home environment assessment tools which enable older people to assess their homes and prepare for ageing in place may be beneficial.
Objective:
To establish validity of a digital self-assessment tool by assessing it against the current gold standard: an occupational therapy home assessment.
Methods:
A cohort of adults aged 60 and over living within metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia, Australia assessed their homes using a digital self-assessment tool simultaneously with an occupational therapist. Adults living within their home and who did not have significant levels of disabilities were recruited. Cohen’s Kappa and Gwet’s AC1 were used to assess validity.
Results:
Sixty-one participants self-assessed their own home using the digital self-assessment tool. Overall levels of agreement were high, supporting the validity of the tool in identifying potential hazards. Lower levels of agreement were found at steps, toilets, bathrooms, and backyards.
Conclusions:
Older people were able to self-assess their home using a digital self-assessment tool. Digital health tools enable older people to start thinking about their future housing needs. Innovative tools which can identify problems and generate solutions may improve age-friendliness of the home environment. Clinical Trial: This research was approved by the Flinders University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project number 5303).
Citation
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.