Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors

• Theories and methods
• Theoretical background
• Research methods & tools
• Publications on the I'DGO project

Research Methods and Tools

1. Introduction theories and methods
2. OPENspace research methods
3. OISD:WISE and SURFACE research methods
4. Checklist of urban form characteristics
5. Physical audit of detailed design features
6. References

1. Introduction

In the I’DGO consortium we used a multi-method approach to gathering the data, which allowed for triangulation of findings using different methods. The methods included the following:

• literature reviews
• focus groups, semi-structured interviews and workshops with older people in the first, exploratory phase of research
• workshops and questionnaires with designers and providers of open space and the outdoor environment
• questionnaire surveys with older people as participants
• site-based analysis of urban form and detailed design of the outdoor environment and behaviour-setting surveys of site use
• analysis and comparison of good practice

1.1 Literature reviews

To initiate the project, all the I’DGO research centres undertook a review of existing literature on older people’s quality of life in relation to the outdoor environment. We also reviewed existing methods and approaches to researching the relationship between physical environment and quality of life.

1.2 Focus Groups

Focus groups interviews were conducted to help better understand the ways in which the outdoor environment is involved in various aspects of older people’s quality of life. 15 focus groups were held in all, involving a total of 86 participants.

Core questions asked in all focus groups related to what quality of life means to people, the benefits of going outdoors and the negative aspects or problems related to going outdoors.

1.3 Questionnaire Surveys

Several questionnaires were developed for use in the I’DGO project. Three different surveys of older people were undertaken, with a total sample of over 770 people interviewed or having completed questionnaires. A survey of design professionals engaged in the built and outdoor environment was also undertaken in collaboration with another research consortium, Vivacity

The details of research methods and tools used by each research centre are set out in the sections below.

2. OPENspace research methods

OPENspace used a range of research methods as follows:

• literature review
• focus groups and workshops with older people as part of an exploratory phase of research
• a focus group with landscape architects and urban designers
• two questionnaire surveys mailed to older people to explore outdoor environments, outdoor activity and quality of life
• site-based behaviour-setting surveys of site use and accompanied walks with older people
• analysis of results in relation to current policy and practice

2.1 Literature reviews

We reviewed relevant literature in environmental psychology, landscape architecture, gerontology and public health.

2.2 Focus groups with older people

Eight focus group interviews were carried out by OPENspace, four in Edinburgh, one in Glasgow and three in Cornwall, involving a total of 48 participants. They were held in May and June 2004.

The focus group discussions covered what quality of life means to people; the benefits of going outdoors; the negative aspects or problems related to going outdoors; what would be missed if people were not able to go outdoors; favourite outdoor place; frequency and reasons for going outdoors; what in the environment makes outdoor activities difficult; what preparations need to be made before going outdoors; places no longer visited, and reasons for that.

2.3 Focus group with professional designers

We held a focus group discussion with landscape architects and urban designers in March 2005. A group of practitioners were invited to discuss environmental characteristics that encourage or discourage older people’s use of open spaces and attributes of good design guidelines. This has helped inform our interpretation of research findings and the development of design guidance.

2.4 First survey − questionnaire on outdoor activity, environmental support and quality of life

A cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted to examine the associations between the quality of outdoor environments, especially neighbourhood parks and open spaces, outdoor activities and the quality of life of older people.

2.4.1. Data Collection Procedure

Three different data collection methods were employed to reflect the environmental and socio-cultural diversity of older people’s use of outdoor spaces. The total number of valid responses was 335.

a) Mail survey

The sample for postal questionnaire was selected randomly from 20 local authorities in the UK. These local authorities were chosen from Britain’s 11 government regions based on population distribution, geographic location, urban/rural areas and types of industry (17 from England, 2 from Scotland and 1 from Wales). A questionnaire was mailed to 2218 people in the sample. About half of the non-responders were contacted by telephone to be reminded of the survey. The total number of responses after the follow-ups was 211 (10% response rate).

b) Environmental support

Environmental support was measured in two ways. It was operationally defined as: perceived quality of neighbourhood environments; and the extent to which the environment makes it difficult or easy to carry out chosen activities and their personal importance.

• i) Perceived quality of neighbourhood outdoor space

  A 30-item scale was developed, based on the focus group interviews, instruments developed by Saelens et al. (2003) and Humpel et al. (2004), and relevant design guidelines (e.g., Civic Trust, 2004; DTLR, 2002).

  Of 30 items in this scale, three items are relevant to outdoor spaces around one’s house, the majority of items are concerned with a local open space such as a park and routes to reach such a space, and four items ask about the larger neighbourhood area.

  The scale focuses on natural or green environments because of the distinctive benefits (restorative and social) they may possess for older people.

• ii) Personal projects carried out in neighbourhood outdoor space.

  The original version of the personal projects analysis questionnaire developed by Little (1983), which can be complex and over lengthy for older people, was simplified for this study. The participants were asked to list outdoor activities they do regularly, have decided to undertake, or are thinking about doing (free description).

  Participants were then asked to evaluate each activity in terms of the extent to which the environment makes it difficult or easy to carry out, and its personal importance.

  The environmental support for a participant was calculated as a weighted mean of support (difficulty/easiness) for the listed activities using the importance as a weight (Wallenius, 1999).

c) Quality of life

Quality of life was evaluated through a 5-item scale to measure people’s satisfaction with life, developed by Diener & colleagues (1985). The reliability of the scale was 0.87.

d) Functional capability

Functional capability was measured by asking participants to indicate the ease with which they could perform six instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) (Jette et al., 1986). The IADLs employed were concerned with mobility such as walking a certain distance, climbing stairs and using public transportation. The number of outdoor activities (personal projects) listed by participants was also included in the analysis.

e) Health

Health was measured as the number of days (in the last 30 days) poor health prevented the person from doing daily activities.

f) Demographics

Socio-demographic measures included: gender, age, ethnicity, amount of time living in current neighbourhood, living arrangement, education, access to a car, and occupation/former occupation of main ’breadwinner’ in the household.

2.5. Second survey− choice-based conjoint questionnaire on environmental attributes

2.5.1. Research Design

A partial design was used for the construction of a choice-based conjoint (CBC) questionnaire. CBC conjoint was chosen because it models people’s behaviour in real-life and has the ability to perform 'what-if' simulations. Older people’s choices in relation to the use of outdoor spaces essentially involve trade-off situations, as the ideal environment in all dimensions is unlikely to be what is available in practice. For instance, a person may have a choice between visiting a local park very close to home with a café and toilets but no trees and few plants or one at a greater distance, with dense trees and a variety of plants but no special facilities such as toilets, etc. The CBC questionnaire makes it possible to offer a range of alternatives such as this and asks which the respondent prefers.

2.5.2 Data Collection Procedure

From the mail survey sample mentioned in 2.4.1 (a) above, the conjoint questionnaire were mailed to 1840 people who were not contacted in Study 1. The total number of responses was 237.

2.5.3. Measures & Instruments

The instrument involved 15 attributes each taking up to 4 levels with 14 paired comparisons per respondent and 15 versions of the questionnaire, giving an efficiency of over 90%. Every respondent considered 14 pairs and, in each case, was asked which of the two profiled places they preferred.

a) Open space attributes

Attributes measured were: distance to park, pavement existence, pavement quality, trees along footpath, seats en route, volume of road traffic, trees/plants, facilities (café, toilets, etc), seats in the park, things to watch, maintenance, nuisances (dog fouling, youths hanging about, etc), water feature, public transport, and car park.

b) Use of nearby park

Respondents were asked to indicate the distance to a nearby park, the transport means they used to get to park, and frequency of their visits to the park.

c) Demographics

Socio-demographics measures included: gender, age, postcode, living arrangement (home/sheltered housing), living condition (alone/with someone), functional status (seeing, hearing, and getting around).

2.6 Accompanied walks and behaviour−setting surveys

We carried out "accompanied walks" with some older people who agreed to participate, having completed our questionnaire survey. These walks were between the person’s house and a local open space. In each case, we asked the participant to guide us to a local open space and to tell us what environmental factors make going out easy or difficult. We carried out 5 full accompanied walks − 2 in Dundee, 1 in Edinburgh and 2 in Newcastle, in addition to 2 ’virtual’ accompanied walks in Ayr, where the weather was so bad on the day that 'talk through' interviews with participants were all that was possible.

We also conducted natural observation of older people’s behaviours in parks that have been identified as examples of good practice. This allowed us to identify typical behaviour settings and to note the factors in the design of the physical environment that appear to facilitate and enhance the quality of use by older people. We carried out 9 observational studies of behaviour settings in all, 3 in Dundee and 6 in Newcastle.

2.7. Contributions from the studies of neighbourhood open space

The studies outlined above make the following contributions to methodological issues in this field:

• The findings shed light on the question of which aspects of the environment make a difference in older people’s engagement in outdoor activities.
• The findings present an ecological framework integrating different kinds of concepts.
• There is a triangulation of methods, thus increasing validity.
• There is triangulation of theories by measuring environment support through two different instruments, which had different theoretical origins but in the end were both correlated with life satisfaction.
• Use of trade-off data to examine older people’s preferences for environmental attributes through choice-based conjoint analysis helps to bridge the gap in this area of research.
• The findings can be used to guide environmental, behavioural and policy interventions.

2.8 Limitations

Methodological limitations include the small size and low response rate of the mailed questionnaire samples, which appears to be a common difficulty in administering questionnaires to the general population of older people. The use of self-report data only for measuring health is another limitation.

3. OISD:WISE and SURFACE research methods

OISD:WISE and SURFACE used a multi-method approach to gathering the data, which helped us to make sure our research was as rigorous as possible. The methods used were:

• Literature review
• Focus groups
• Semi-structured in-depth interviews
• Measurement of the urban form features of each participant’s local neighbourhood
• Measurement of the detailed design features of each participant’s local neighbourhood

3.1 Research methods

a) Literature review

We looked at existing literature to find out what has already been written about older people’s quality of life in relation to the outdoor environment.

b) Focus groups

We held seven focus groups in suburban and urban locations in Cheshire, Wales and London. Numbers ranged from 3 to 7 per group with a total number of 38 participants in all. Sessions took roughly one hour and were held in a church, village hall and community centre. We pooled the findings from our literature review and focus groups with those of OPENspace to develop the table "Aspects of Quality of Life Influenced by Outdoor Environments" This table was then used as a guide for developing the questionnaire to be used in the semi-structured interviews.

c) Interviews

We interviewed 200 people aged 65 and over in the Greater Manchester area, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. We used semi-structured conversational interviews to encourage the participants to talk freely about their opinions and experiences. Interviews took between 45 minutes and 2 hours depending on the personality and health of the participant but in general took roughly one hour.

We interviewed participants living in different types of location:

• 15 living in a major city or town centre
• 45 living in a major city or town district
• 52 living in a suburb or on the edge of a major city or town
• 13 living in a large town centre
• 30 living in a suburb or on the edge of a large town
• 19 living in a small town
• 26 living in a village

It proved impossible to gain a completely even spread of people across the different location types but the weighting towards the suburbs and districts is representative of the types of location generally chosen by older people in the UK. We spoke to older people living in their own homes, in sheltered housing and in older peoples’ housing developments in both the social and private sectors. Contact was made through Housing Associations, the management companies of private older people’s development and sheltered housing schemes, and community groups.

d) Measurements of the participants’ local neighbourhoods

Checklists were used to measure the urban form and the detailed design features of each participant’s local neighbourhood. The surveys were conducted within a 300m radius of each participant’s home and only included the area the participant would be able to walk in from home without driving, so that areas not accessible to pedestrians due to physical barriers, such as rivers and railway lines, were excluded. All surveys were done between 10am and 3pm weekdays or during daylight hours at weekends. 1:1250 scale OS maps were used.

3.2 OISD:WISE and SURFACE research tools

Each research method required us to develop a tool with which to gather the necessary data.

3.2.1 Focus group schedule

In developing the focus group schedule we looked at the literature on focus groups and particularly sought information on the best ways to conduct focus groups which were likely to include a mixture of frail and fit people. For example, it is considered good practice for focus groups of less fit older people to be smaller than average (around 5 to 6 people) and to not last longer than an hour.

Participants were asked to complete a personal details sheet giving some basic information on their age, health and what type of housing they lived in. They were then asked as a group to discuss what came to their minds when they thought of the term "quality of life". In the second part of the session they were given a slide show of photographs showing different features of the outdoor environment, such as street scenes and street furniture, and asked to give their opinions of how such features might affect their personal quality of life both positively and negatively.

3.2.2 Interview questionnaire and book of photographs

The questionnaire was used to ask participants about how they felt about their neighbourhood, their experiences when they went outside and their views about features in their neighbourhood. We explained to participants that by neighbourhood we meant the area that they walked in locally. The questionnaire was divided into 5 sections:

• Personal information − this section sought to gain some information on the intervening variables that might affect a participant’s ability to use the outdoor environment, such as age and health.
• Getting outside − this section asked participants about being outside as a pedestrian.
• Quality of life − this section asked participants about their feelings and opinions about living in their neighbourhood.
• Urban form photographs − in this section we used sets of photographs to encourage participants to talk about their preferences and opinions of different features of urban form, including different types of neighbourhood, streets and outdoor spaces.
• Detailed design photographs − in this section we used sets of photographs to encourage participants to talk about their preferences and opinions of different features of detailed design, including different types of footways, street furniture and paving.

At the end of the interviews some participants were asked if they would be willing to take photographs of their local neighbourhood, using a disposable camera. They were asked either to take only pictures that demonstrated what they liked about their local neighbourhood or only what they disliked. This meant that we were able to tell what the photographs represented without the participants having to make notes as they took the pictures.

4 Checklist of urban form characteristics

This was adapted from checklists previously designed by OISD:WISE (e.g. Built Environment Site Survey Checklist, (Burton et al, 2005)) using the findings from the literature review and focus groups. The checklist was piloted for inter-rater reliability, and to ensure that characteristics being measured were assessed in an appropriate manner.

The urban form checklist was divided into four sections:

• Map measurements of the neighbourhood’s predominant street pattern, block sizes, street junctions and open space.
• The participant’s dwelling type − including form, height and age.
• The participant’s street − including type, shape, topography, natural surveillance, variety of built form, condition of buildings and street greenery.
• The participants’ neighbourhood − including location, mix of use, density, natural surveillance, legibility, traffic and pedestrian levels, greenery.

Further information on the checklist is available from ejburton@brookes.ac.uk

5 Physical audit of detailed design features

An audit tool was developed to measure aspects of an older person’s street and their neighbourhood at the level of detailed design. The basis of the tool was a checklist previously designed by OISD:WISE which was adapted to include findings from the literature review and focus groups, and experience of the SURFACE team in undertaking audit work. The audit tool was piloted for inter-rater reliability, and to ensure that characteristics being measured were assessed in an appropriate manner. Characteristics included in the audit tool were:

• Street topography and level of motorised traffic
• Pedestrian / traffic segregation
• Street greenery
• Footways − material, width, shared use, ease of movement, condition
• Level changes
• Road crossing provision
• Signage
• Furniture − seating, bus stops,
• General level of accessibility
• Street and neighbourhood greenery
• Safety and perceived level of safety
• Incivilities and dereliction

Further information on the audit tool is available from r.newton@salford.ac.uk

References

Burton, E., Weich, S., Blanchard, M. and Prince, M., 2005. Measuring physical characteristics of housing: the Built Environment Site Survey Checklist (BESSC). Environment and Planning B, 32(2), pp 265-280.

Civic Trust (2004). Green flag award guidance manual. Available from: http://www.greenflagaward.org.uk/manual [Accessed July 2005].

Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions [DTLR] (2002). Improving urban park, play areas and green spaces. Available from: http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1127724 [Accessed July 2005].

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., and Griffin, S., 1985. The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), pp 71-75.

Humpel, N., Owen, N., Iverson, D., Leslie, E., and Bauman, A. 2004b. Perceived environment attributes, residential location, and walking for particular purposes. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 26(2), pp 119-125.

Jette, A. M., Davies, A. R., Cleary, P. D., Calkins, D. R., Rubenstein, L. V., Fink, A., Kosecoff, J., Young, R. T., Brook, R. H., and Delbanco, T. L., 1986. The Functional Status Questionnaire: reliability and validity when used in primary care. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 1(3), pp 143-149.

Little, B. R., 1983. Personal projects: A rationale and method for investigation. Environment and Behavior, 15, pp 273-309.

Saelens, B, E., Sallis, J. F., Black, J. B., and Chen, D., 2003. Neighborhood-based differences in physical activity: an environment scale evaluation. American Journal of Public Health, 93, pp 1552-1558.

Wallenius, M., 1999. Personal projects in everyday places: perceived supportiveness of the environment and psychological well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19, pp 131-143.