Stimulation and safety levels in living environments of older people: weighting of items with interdisciplinary experts in ageing

Ageing well in place requires a living environment that aligns with older adults’ needs. While the importance of safety in healthy ageing is well established, the contribution of environmental stimulation remains unclear. The aim is to develop a scoring system evaluating physical and cognitive stimulation, and safety. Experts from ageing related
fields weighted 50 items for their importance and 128 sub-items for their impact and type of influence. Final scores resulted from multiplying importance and impact values. Overall agreement was high (ICC > 0.80). Regarding importance, 76% of stimulation-related and 86% of safety items reached consensus (MAD > 2.5). For impact, 75% agreement was achieved for 50% of sub-items related to physical stimulation, 33% related to cognitive
stimulation, and 60% for safety. Most sub-items were considered to have a beneficial influence across all three domains. This study created a scoring system rating each sub-item for physical and cognitive stimulation, and safety.