Theoretical Background
- Introduction theoretical background
- Needs Satisfaction Model of Quality of Life
- Environmental Support for Outdoor Activities
- Personal construct theory & personal projects
- Environmental Attributes
- Unmet Needs
- References
1. Introduction
In this section we set out the theoretical background to the research being undertaken by the I'DGO consortium and the models used as a basis for the research approaches.
2. Needs Satisfaction Model of Quality of Life (QoL)
A conceptual framework is proposed in order to understand the mechanisms through which engagement with outdoor environments can enhance older people's quality of life (QoL), and to enable us to propose effective interventions.
Even though quality of life has been the subject of much research, there is still little agreement about its definition and measurement. Our theoretical approach is based on the needs satisfaction model proposed by Hyde, Wiggins, Higgs & Blane (2003). It states that conceptualizations and measures that reduce QoL to (ill) health are not appropriate. They ignore older people's ability to change the environment, adapt to it, and find ways to pursue their goals. According to Hyde et al, measures of QoL should be different from factors that might affect it, such as health, social networks, and material resources.
Building on Maslow's motivational model (Maslow, 1968), the "Needs Satisfaction Model" for QoL emphasizes that human beings are "needs satisfiers". Humans are not limited to basic needs; they pursue higher needs, such as control, autonomy, self-realization, and pleasure.
In the context of outdoor environments, this means that older people achieve their basic and higher needs by pursuing activities relevant to personal goals. The role of the environment involves what it offers in terms of engagement and action - what it affords (Gibson, 1979) - , people's perceptions of these affordances and their personal motivation to pursue their goals. A Needs Satisfaction Model gives value to older people's agency in appraising, changing, and adapting to what the environment has to offer, in terms of constraints and opportunities. It places people in context, so it evaluates the "quality" of their lives in terms of the satisfaction of needs. QoL is given a dynamic tone since needs are time- and space-dependent and are usually carried out in behaviour settings. For example, the need for autonomy predominates throughout life even though it can be achieved in different ways.
In this research, we tapped into the motivational aspect of QoL by defining 'environmental support' both in terms of perceived quality of the environment and in relation to personal goals and activities - 'personal projects'. This recognizes that health is not a sufficient and all-encompassing measure for QoL in old age, particularly, when the goal is to propose policy and environmental interventions.
This overarching conceptual framework (Figure 1) has been instrumental in translating our research findings into practical guidance. A complementary model is also proposed (Figure 2), that has acted as a guide to empirical examination of key portions of these overall concepts and relationships, that is, those relevant to engagement with outdoor environments.
Figure 1. Needs Satisfaction Model of QoL
3. Environmental Support for Outdoor Activities
A supportive outdoor environment is one that makes getting outdoors easy and enjoyable. Environmental support is determined by a combination of what the environment provides or affords, people's perceptions of this environment and what they want to do, in other words, their motivation to act in it. Our research in the I'DGO consortium has focused on investigating what aspects of the outdoor environment contribute to older people's quality of life. It is therefore necessary to integrate the concepts of environmental support and quality of life. In this project, we propose a conceptualisation of environmental support which integrates three different but complementary views: personal projects, environmental attributes, and unmet needs. It is our understanding that these concepts are correlated and together have an impact in patterns of outdoor activities and quality of life (Figure 2) (Sugiyama and Ward Thompson, in press 2007b).
Figure 2. Quality of Life (QOL) predicted by Three Different Types of Environmental Support (ES)
4. Personal construct theory & personal projects
Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory provides a theoretical basis for the concept of personal projects proposed by Little (1983). Kelly argued that individuals have "personal constructs," through which they construe and understand their worlds. A person interprets events and attaches meaning to them according to his or her personal constructs, which are shaped by past experiences. The concept of personal projects is a natural extension of this, insofar as it represents a person's ongoing actions towards the attainment of personally-relevant goals.
Personal projects are generated from individual construal of a person's self, context, and daily transactions (Little, 2000). Since older people's projects are likely to be dependent on contextual resources and constraints, this concept seems highly relevant to addressing the relationship between the environment and older people. In this study, the relevant goals in which we have an interest are those that involve outdoor activities in order to achieve the project. Such personal projects might involve tidying the garden, for example, going for a daily walk in the local park, or posting a letter.
Empirical studies have shown that scores from personal projects analysis can successfully predict a person's subjective well-being. According to Omodei and Wearing (1990), personal projects contribute to quality of life in two main ways. First, they can be understood as a vehicle to reach a person's global life goal and help a person to attain a desired state. Second, they are important for their own sake; namely, the well-being of a person can be found in the process towards a given state rather than the end state itself (Omodei and Wearing, 1990). Whichever may be the case, an individual's well-being and characteristics of personal projects seem to be closely related and relevant to sustaining activity into very old age.
The concept of personal projects therefore serves as a unifying vehicle to understand older people's relationship with outdoor places. Theoretically, it recognises the transactional nature of human dealings with the environment. Methodologically, it provides a concrete way for measuring "the person-in-context" (Little, 2000).
4.1 Self-efficacy
Personal projects are more likely to be pursued if the person believes in her/his ability to exert control over the environment. The notion of self-efficacy originated from social cognitive theory and was developed by Bandura (1986) as the foundation of motivation and action.
According to Bandura, individuals' recognition of opportunities for activities, their own skills to conduct them, and expected benefits from them, determines their activity patterns. That is, beliefs of personal efficacy can shape the types of activities and environments people choose. People usually avoid activities they believe exceed their capabilities and select activities they judge themselves capable of coping with. The environment can play a major role in this process. For example, an outdoor space with well-maintained, high quality paths can help older people maintain a sense of control in that they feel able to perform activities in that environment without fear of falling or being vulnerable to crime. By contrast, an open space with poorly maintained paths can trigger a sense of lack of control and therefore inefficacy. Equally, monotonous or predictable outdoor spaces requiring little engagement and independent judgment on the part of a visitor may diminish stimulation and functional challenge and consequent experience of self-efficacy.
The concept of personal efficacy can be easily integrated with personal constructs and personal projects, insofar as it focuses on a person's ongoing patterns of activities. In this sense, environmental factors, either barriers or facilitators, play an important role in the cognitive processes that shape self-efficacy (Satariano and McAuley, 2003) and the use of self-efficacy as a determinant of activity participation has been confirmed in empirical studies (e.g., Booth et al, 2000; McAuley et al, 2003).
4.2 Personal Projects in I'DGO
In this study, in questionnaires developed by OPENspace, the participants were asked to list outdoor activities they do regularly, have decided to undertake, or are thinking about doing (free description). They 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, on a 5-point scale. In addition to the listed activities, they were asked to rate "just go for a walk" on the same basis.
The concept of personal projects is relevant in the context of I'DGO in the sense that it proposes an ecological view of people's interaction with their environment. The relevance of its use can be summarized as follows:
- a. It places the individual in action, therefore, in context
- b. It provides a link between behavioural and environmental aspects of older people's quality of life and health, which are two separate constructs.
- c. It introduces the notion of sustainability in the pursuit of projects that are perceived as 'core projects' in people's lives. When a person's core projects are threatened, e.g. due to external factors such as a poor quality environment, negative experiences follow, prompting re-direction of action. This may have significance in limiting people's ability to maintain health-supporting lifestyles into old age.
- d. The theory of personal projects aids in the analysis of which aspects of the environment make a difference in people's quality of life. It provides a method for such analyses.
- e. Personal projects analysis is a flexible methodology where personal projects can be selected in relation to their theoretical and applied relevance.
5. Environmental Attributes
Some environmental attributes help people carry out activities, while others thwart people's plans or intentions. Two ecological concepts, behaviour settings and affordances (Barker, 1968; Gibson, 1979), are relevant to understand the role of environmental attributes as one of the elements in a model of environmental support that tries to integrate personal projects, environmental attributes, and unmet needs.
Outdoor activities occur in a specific physical environment, are spaced in a determined lapse of time, and developed in connection with the activities of others. Behaviour settings are physical and social-cultural contexts where these activities take place. They are created, developed, and designed to encourage or restrict certain kinds of behaviours. For example, some offer incentive for physical activity, such as sports pitches, while others restrict it, such as theatres. The aspect of encouragement/facilitation and restriction/limitation can be better understood through the use of another ecological concept-affordances. Affordances are properties available in the environment which offer opportunities for different kinds of activities. They link person and place, since they are only realised when an individual's motivations and capabilities are reciprocated by what the environment has to offer.
In some behaviour settings, the objective in creating inclusive environments is to remove environmental factors that restrict outdoor activity while, in others, the aim is to enhance resources that are an incentive to activity or make it possible. Behaviour settings involving outdoor activities, for instance a group of older people taking a morning walk in a park, can be defined as "ecological units", a composite of environmental and behavioural factors. Outdoor activities are physically located actions which take place in behaviour settings. These behaviour settings are designed to reinforce certain kinds of behaviour, that is, they afford or restrict certain kinds of activities.
Research in this area has attempted to document environmental factors that influence people's outdoor activities, both through the use of audit type instruments for gathering objective data and through self-reported and therefore subjective measures. A review by Moudon and Lee (2003) identified 31 instruments that aim to measure the degree of environment support objectively. Examples include the Pedestrian Deficiency Index developed by the City of Portland (1997) and SPACES (Systematic Pedestrian and Cycling Environmental Scan) proposed by Pikora et al (2002). These instruments employ different measures (e.g., street connectivity, sidewalk continuity, to target specific environmental features likely to affect behaviour.
In relation to subjective measures, several instruments have been proposed to assess the perceived adequacy of a neighbourhood area for walking. For instance, NEWS (Neighborhood Environmental Walkability Scale), developed by Saelens et al (2003a), assesses residential density, land-use mix, access to services, street pattern, availability of facilities for walking, aesthetics and safety. Humpel et al (2004b) also reported a similar ecological scale to evaluate the quality of neighbourhood as a place to walk. An advantage of subjective measures is that they take into account individual differences. For older people, the same environmental attributes may have different implications depending on person's capability and the kind of activity they want to undertake. Thus it seems important to incorporate individual differences in measures to assess the degree of environmental support for outdoor activities.
A growing body of research also shows the connection between physical environmental factors and health. Environmental factors include aesthetic features, crowdedness, air pollution, noise, housing condition and open spaces (Blafour & Kaplan, 2002; Cummins, Stafford, Macintyre, Marmot & Ellaway, 2005; Halpern, 1995; Wright & Fisher, 2003). Wen, Hawkley, & Cacioppo (2006) examined the relationship between perceptions of neighbourhood and health in a sample of older adults with ages ranging from 50 to 67 years. Perceived general neighbourhood quality was measured through the use of a composite measure which included perceptions of physical, social and service aspects of the environment. Perceived physical environment was measured through participants’ evaluation of housing, public parks, open spaces, noise, crowdedness and air quality. The findings indicated that perceived physical environment showed a greater contribution than other dimensions in the link between neighbourhood and health.
In terms of physical activity, there is evidence that aesthetically pleasing and tree-lined walking paths, rather than monotonous or unattractive streets and footways, are more likely to stimulate physical pursuits. Having shops and other accessible facilities nearby is also encouragement to walk in a neighbourhood (Corti, Donovan, & Holman, 1997). A study in Australia highlights the fact that it is not only the provision of space for physical activity that is important for people's perceptions and use of these settings but also how they are designed and maintained (Hahn & Craythorn, 1994).
Environmental attributes focused on in this project relate to the perceived degree of supportiveness of the outdoor environment for older people in relation to their desired and planned activities.
6. Unmet Needs
Unmet need is defined in this context as the discrepancy between what a person would like to do in a setting and what the setting allows the person to do. The concept emerged out of the need to target those personal projects that are not accomplished, whether because the environment does not facilitate their pursuit or because the environment is evaluated in a negative way and thus impairs further action. Since the process of ageing often involves a gradual decline in various functions, what a person cannot do in a given situation may be as significant as what the person can do. This concept helps to focus on individual differences and on understanding adaptation to outdoor spaces in diverse environments, such as neighbourhoods, private homes, and nursing homes.
Unmet needs arise when individuals judge that a setting cannot accommodate their intended actions. Changes in a person's needs, capability or expected outcomes may alter their perceptions of what an environment affords. The "appraisal" aspect is similar to that specified in self-efficacy. The relevance of this concept in I'DGO refers to its usefulness in addressing older people's latent needs and wants.
As people move to older-age phases, most experience losses of resources, productive roles, access to opportunities and challenging activities which constrain the maintenance of self-efficacy. Activities of daily living then become crucial in maintaining an independent life-style. It is possible to define unmet needs in the present study as those needing environmental support to perform an intended activity, but not receiving adequate support.
In summary, personal constructs, personal projects, self-efficacy and unmet needs are concepts that account for the individual's agency in the use of the outdoor environment. These processes of agency help understand the "experiential" aspect of environmental support by focusing on the active role of older person.
13.
References
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