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    • To make older adults more physically active their nearby out

    2018-11-12

    To make older adults more physically active, their nearby outdoor environments should make physical activities more attractive, functional, and safe. In the neighborhoods with functional pedestrian facilities, such as comfortable sidewalks along walking routes, senior residents were found to engage in more physical activities (Owen et al., 2004; Patterson and Chapman, 2004; Wang and Lee, 2010). Moreover, having desirable destinations within walking distance from home may motivate people to walk outdoors. In traditional urban neighborhoods, where pedestrians have access to recreational and utilitarian destinations for daily living, older adults have high levels of outdoor physical activities (Patterson and Chapman, 2004; Saelens et al., 2003; Wister, 2005). Further, environmental safety from traffic and crime could be a critical concern of less-competent older adults going outside. Neighborhood safety is related to older adults׳ outdoor physical activities (Humpel et al., 2002; Owen et al., 2004). Most of the above findings were regarding neighborhood environments. There is limited evidence to indicate the specific site environmental factors related with physical activities. Immediately adjacent to home, residential site environments such as yards are both origins of outdoor trips and destinations on the way back to home. Distinguished from necessary physical activities (such as walking to bus stations for a daily commute), most physical activities on residential sites or properties are optional. As older adults are typically more environmentally docile than young people, the quality of residential site environments is an important concern in promoting physical activities among the elderly (Lawton, 1985, 1989; Lawton and Simon, 1968). Adding value to the previous literature, this PF-573228 research studied twelve environmental features on and around residential sites, which are thought to be associated with older adults’ physical activities.
    Methodologies The structure of relationships between physical activities and personal factors, social and physical environmental factors was described in the Social Ecological Model (Zimring, Joseph et al., 2005). Based on this model, the value of physical environmental factors on residential sites in predicting levels of older adults׳ physical activities was examined in this study. Table 1 listed the studied personal and social factors. Focus of this study is the residential site environments, which older adults can access without crossing streets or vehicular traffic. The environments should be attractive, functional and safe, as perceived by older adults both from the indoors and in the outdoor settings. Based on findings from previous research, twelve environmental factors were studied under four categories: (1) Typology, (2) Motivators, (3) Functionality, and (4) Safety (Table 2). By geo-coding participants׳ mailing addresses in GIS, 57 of the 110 sites were identified in the area of Houston, TX (Appendix A). By using GIS instruments, objective measures of environmental features on the 57 sites were collected. The data sources included the websites of the Geographic Information & Management System of Houston, the Harris County Appraisal District, the Houston- Galveston Area Council, the Texas Natural Resource Information System (TNRIS), the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Environmental Systems Research Institute. GIS layers applied in geotropism study included Parcel, Parcel measure, Building footprint, Street outline, Freeway, Zip-code, DOQ (a digital mapping product with aerial photographs acquired in 2004), and Satellite photo (Figure 1). For quantitative data analyses, the Statistics Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 13.0) was applied. Bivariate correlations among variables were analyzed by t-test and Chi-square test. t-Tests are widely used to assess whether or not the means of two groups are statistically different from each other. Chi-square tests examine the association between two groups of variable as the row and column variables. Only one of the variables which were significantly correlated with each other (p<0.05, two tailed) was selected for multivariate analyses. Hierarchical linear regression models were applied to examine the value of physical environments on residential sites in predicting levels of older adults׳ physical activities. Hierarchical linear models also called multilevel regression models group the data into a hierarchy of regressions and widely used where the data have a natural hierarchical structure. With personal factors and social factors in the models, physical environmental factors were entered as the last block in modeling process. Both full models and nested models were applied. In full models, variables entered and their sequences of entering were decided by theoretical concerns. In nested models, the procedure itself selected predictor variables to enter the modeling by using the stepwise function of SPSS.