Housing Assessment Tools for Older People: A Systematic Mapping Study

The aging of the population, combined with the desire of older people to age in place, call for a rethink of their housing environment, often proven to be unsuited to their needs. Our study unfolds under the larger umbrella of the “HABITAGE” research project, which seeks to study the stimulating nature of older people’s living places by exploring the influence of their living environment (including both the “home” and the “proximal environment”) on their health. One of the project's final aims is to develop a “housing stimulation assessment tool” that will indicate whether an older inhabitant’s living environment is adapted to their state of health. To achieve this, a first step is to collect, analyze and synthesize existing tools and guides assessing the living environments of older people (including people with reduced mobility). Through this poster, we present a “systematic mapping study”, which aims (i) to map out and categorize existing literature on such existing tools and guides and (ii) to identify gaps in the researched literature. The documents included in the study are selected based on their title, abstract, and keywords and are extracted from various databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, as well as from grey literature. The presented poster will highlight the main findings of the systematic mapping study, providing a comprehensive overview of existing housing assessment tools and offering insights into the types of housing targeted by these tools, their main objectives, criteria for assessment, origins, and users’ profiles.