How Do Older Women Perceive their Safety in Iranian Urban Outdoor Environments?
- PDF / 828,477 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 94 Downloads / 269 Views
How Do Older Women Perceive their Safety in Iranian Urban Outdoor Environments? Azadeh Lak 1
& Reihaneh
Aghamolaei 2
& Phyo
K. Myint 3
Accepted: 18 September 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract According to the elders’ health as the main priority of ageing in place, recent research focuses on a better understanding of the elders’ needs of perceived safety especially the older women as the vulnerable group in urban open environments. This study aims to explore the perception of older women about safety and its related features in outdoor spaces according to promoting Active Ageing. We carried out a mixed-method study in which the data collection was conducted through content analysis. Semi-structured interviews were held with 54 older women (mean age 78.40 years). The participants were recruited in open spaces of Tehran applying the purposeful sampling and continued saturation during summer and fall of 2018. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The qualitative content analysis was used to extract sub-themes and main themes. In order to prioritize the extracted concepts, analytic hierarchy process was applied in quantitative analysis (AHP) in the quantitative phase. According to results, the perception of safety in female elders can be described in three main themes consisting of psychological, functional and environmental safety, in that order of priority. Psychological safety includes fears of falling, getting lost, social limitation, anxiety, and social support or capital, while functional safety consists of concerns about public transportation, walkability, and physical activity. Finally, environmental safety comprises of apprehension of road traffic accidence, criminals, upkeep, incivility, and nuisance. Our findings provide both personal and environmental features that can be targeted and require implementation from policymakers and urban developers to meet the needs of growing older vulnerable population to achieve global active ageing goals. Keywords Perceived safety . Older women . Open spaces . Active ageing . Urban
development, urban spaces
* Azadeh Lak [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Ageing Int
Introduction Environmental gerontology has focused on the outdoor environment as one of its significant attributes of older persons’ needs within the area of urban design studies (Lak et al. 2019; Wennberg et al. 2018). Outdoor environments have been recognized as having a positive influence on physical activities (Soares et al. 2019). Indeed, physical activity is an essential healthy lifestyle behaviour associated with maximum physical potential, and healthy living while ameliorating the effects of age such as a decline in physical functioning and impact of co-morbid chronic conditions (Bird et al. 2009; Lak et al. 2019). It also provides older people with socializing opportunities, promotes independence and improves their quality of life (Annera et al. 2014), health and social outcome
Data Loading...
