People and Places
Household Related Quality of Life of Older Germans Over a Decade: Changes from 2007 to 2016
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xiangjun Ren
This paper focuses on the life quality of older Germans through the perspective of household determinants and concentrates in developing a new interpretation of life satisfaction and use it as an appropriate measurement for comprehensive quality of life and quality of life towards certain domain, which contain both objective and subjective indicators of individual. Furthermore, this paper considers the key determinants which are highly related with elderly life satisfaction with asking “among all the household related factors, which factor(s) impact on the life satisfaction of German older people significantly?” Meanwhile, this paper also measures the changes of household determinants which affect life quality over ten years, and additionally, finds the key factors in leading changes on life quality. In theoretical framework of this paper, a reinterpretation of term “life satisfaction” is presented through discussion on literature with a great validity and reliability. Following the assumptions, the basic cross-tabulation analysis and regression are used in this paper to analyze the correlation between life quality and household determinants. Meanwhile, age groups and health condition are controlled to measure the differences between age groups and between different health conditions. The data of this paper comes from three terms European Quality of Life Survey in 2007, 2012 and 2016 which contain numerous samples in Germany and collects information of individual’s life quality from different dimensions. 996 older Germans are drawn from the survey database for analysis to find the key determinants of their quality of life.
Research on the Interaction between Ageing People and Urban Open Spaces: Emotional Fulfillment and Well-being in Neighbourhood Parks — a Case Study in Beijing, China
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Youmei Zhou
The local environment of urban open spaces around communities contributes to the well-being of residents, especially the retired. Many barriers surround aging people: youth-oriented society, physical isolation, shifting social values, sensory losses, diminished power, and retirement, hindering them from affiliation and interaction with others. Open spaces provide exercise and aesthetic needs, and social connections which comfort them from loneliness linked closely to psychological well-being. There are two questions: Which elements of the interaction relationship principle directly impact people, restoring an aging-friendly environment benefiting the elderly emotional fulfillment and well-being? In this paper, the effective relationship has been explored through a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with the elderly (N=418) in 5 neighborhood park in Chaoyang district Beijing. This research is using Goodman and Kruskal's gamma with indicated good performance to measure the associations in a quantitative approach and identify the limitations and drives by qualitative analysis. However, there are two main findings in this research: firstly, the significant correlations between the features related to the social isolation of the elderly and their emotional bonding with neighborhood parks, which is positive significantly correlated with self-evaluated quality of life and mental health. Secondly, loneliness, the feeling of useless, and fearless have significantly strong correlations with each other and shows the positively promoting effect of people engaging in group activities approaching to self-esteem, self-identity and social psychological satisfaction.
Istanbul’s “Age-Driven” Spaces
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Berfin Varisli
Ageing population and urbanization are two important factors that have main impact on shaping the twenty-first century. There is an increase in population of elderly people in Turkey as in many contemporary European countries. In parallel, cities continue to grow very rapidly as the number of their residents aged over 65 years increases. The adaptation of urban spaces for the needs of elderly population who live in those cities poses one of the issues to be investigated. Istanbul, the highest populated city in Turkey with its more than 14 million population, is also home for many elderly people. Despite the common problems of any metropolitan city such as crowdedness, traffic jams, noise and rush hour commotions, Istanbul has many hidden and/or outward spaces that elderly people prefer to visit often, meet their peers and enjoy their time there. This paper has three aims: one is to evaluate Istanbul in terms of age-friendliness, secondly to be a voice of 65+ aged Istanbulites by discussing their current situation, well-being and expectations from their city; thirdly to explore urban spaces of Istanbul, inwhich are prepared for elderly people’s needs. In order to fulfil those aims, a series of in-depth and focused group interviews were carried out with inhabitants of Istanbul from different social and economic backgrounds, education levels, and age groups.
