The relationship between housing accessibility and healthy aging: the case of Turkish elderly women

Abstract

This study proposed Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) as a tool to elicitate the requirements of elderly to age well and improve the accessibility of home environments. It aims to address the accessibility issues in a case housing environment and provide guidance and design recommendations to designers and architects, who generally have difficulty to obtain information on universally designed housing environments. First, healthy aging concept is introduced. Then, the role of housing accessibility in healthy aging is explored. Later, the methodology is presented. In the findings the importance and satisfaction ratings of 100 Turkish elderly women, which are selected from an exemplary housing environment of the most dense and busiest urban area in Ankara, are analysed. According to results, IPA could be an effective tool to decide how to meet accessibility requirements and maximize home satisfaction. Thus, this study contributes to the design literature by being a first study to explore the applicability of IPA technique in design discipline while eliciting elderly women expectations and accessibility requirements for healthy aging.