UD2014

Authors

Marika Nordlund, Lea Stenberg and Hennariikka Intosalmi

Session

F5. Designing for generations

Date and Time

2014-06-18, 13:30 - 13:50

Room

MA 7

Presentation PDF

Short oral presentation

Transcript of the talk

>> So for the last presentation of this session is going to talk about elderly opinions on housing. So kind of the same things you were asking about but in and out of context.
>> Can everyone hear me? Good afternoon everyone. I come from the welfare of the aging. I’m going to give you an overview of the study related to elderly people’s opinion on housing at the moment.
When we started to plan this research and made the decision to do this research, what we really wanted to know is how the elderly wanted to live. The population in Finland like everywhere else is aging rapidly. It’s been estimated that 26 percent of people are over 60 years. So we need more housing so that the elderly can live independently or have assistance with the help of care services or other services.
They also have to have a choice, choices to make to choose what kind of houses or apartments they want to live. The study speaks of Finland and includes information from people who are that’s why we wanted to ask the elderly, what kind of needs and expectations they have.
Here is an example of the survey. This survey was carried out in collaboration. This is a bereaveuation and it means user standard technology. This means well, we have noticed that the name is very long and if you hear it once, you might remember it. It’s good for us to have that kind of abbreviation. KAKATE is for the services and it’s an association. So this means, this is with the construction and real estate.
So the research was carried out. Today it was connected by using a sample survey and a sample was drawn from the population. It represents the entire population which includes about 268 thousand people.
This research, we are 401. This was done by constructive telephone interviews in August of 2012. These interviews were carried out by a global company that works for the cause. It’s important to note that the sample represents the healthy older people who are still at home. They are able to answer the phone and they don’t have any significant memory disorders but they are able to do that.
The main findings indicate the satisfaction of the elderly, are in general, very satisfied with their housing at the moment. They don’t see any serious problems, however, the respondents have some preferences on how to improve the housing. I hope you are able to read the text. Here, you can see what the elderly responded when they were asked what is the most problematic factors in their current environment.
The main obstacle is the long distance for basic services. Today this is one of the most important things when older people decide what kinds of needs they have. Also due to high housing costs, are quite problematic for many people, for 18 percent. This may make people to get a new apartment or house.
It’s interesting that inaccessibility of the apartment or house is a problem only for nine percent of the respondent dents. This result may indicate that the dwellings really are very access proof or or correspondents are very healthy so they don’t have to think about inaccessibility.
However, almost 40 percent say they don’t have any problems, at the moment. Here are the important factors of the buildings and surroundings. As you can see, the age distribution here is from 55 to 80 years old. To collect the data, it was also used in other reasons so we can now make comparisons due to age groups even with our special interests.
Many factors seem to become more important in old ages. For example, accessibility, space where mobility and age as well as assistive devices are there. It is interesting that this is more important to the older group than the younger one. And as you can see here, 93 percent of the older age group agree that accessibility is key.
Maybe that indicates that there’s safeties, however, we asked for the correspondents if they were willing to pay for the services.
These are the technologies that many people already pay for. Instead, computer related services or automation are not used so many of them have to pay for those. The most likely explanation of these results is that we ask this question because some technological devices are there in Finland and used, however, in many cases, devices cannot be provided by the municipality and that’s why people who want to get them, they have to buy technology themselves or they will not have them.
A percentage of the elderly move from their own home. That’s not a big surprise. It’s 84 percent of the respondents that think that. And less than half of them will move to one assistive living building or some other place.
Again, so this indicates that the satisfaction of the housing plays. We wanted to know about elderly’s people confidence in getting help and the purpose is that elderly, many of them will need help from their own use. This is also problematic. Speaking on technology, for example, using an introduction, even if they live far away or are not able to help for other reasons.
The respondents of our study are getting help but only half of our responsibilities are confident in getting help from the society. That is a pricing result. Our process of carrying out a new survey and getting help through this, we think it’s an important topic and want to know more about it. So that’s why the survey is published by the end of this year.
In general, they already said they are very happy with the current housing and this indicates they also want to live longer and accessibility is seen as the most important factor but it also means a challenge of innovation. Any buildings and houses are quite old so we have to see what is more accessible. They are also interested in getting and using supportive technology.
This as said in India, they want to have easy to use technology so we have something with instructions and devices so they can do it themselves. That’s probably the best way. The process of this development program is to guide and support for building and adapting and making buildings more accessible and safe for the elderly.
So the housing quality is identical with the opinions of the elderly. This is an item starting point of improving elderly for the housing. It’s important for others to get information from the final results and, as said in the beginning of the presentation, they were recorded with these results. However, the effects will be seen long term. These results are part of a larger entity and there has been several studies. We have this kind of developmental program and a lot of work done by different organizations of Finland and those together promote the understanding of accessible housing among them. Thank you!
>> Thank you so much. That was also very interesting talk. It’s very interesting to just have diversity of in this class room. Is there a question coming?
>> Two questions. One, the survey was to age 75 and 80. How about your assumption, if the survey was always between 80 and 90 the second question is, in the previous subsequent, how many of them were expecting support? Does that mean support from society in an official way or unofficial way? Social services provided by a community or not.
>> Yeah, if it’s okay, I will answer to the second question first. So the this is very high level and I think this result that only part of the because of the elderly are seen by most of society and the population, if you look at that kind of comment, that older people they are just a class of society and that’s why they have a lower level so something like that.
And the first question is about this age group. So we interviewed only 75 to 80 year old people but of course, it would be interesting to know about more as well. I think it depends on the help condition of the people, if they are getting to live in their own homes. Any other questions?
>> Thank you for the presentation. Have you thought about the degree of the wellness of the agency, as they grow older? Like if they, I mean, depending on the knowledge point of acknowledging the system, would the answer might be different? Have you ever thought about it?
>> Yeah, of course. As I said, these respondents are the healthier ones. They are in their own homes and are able to answer this kind of survey. The situation might be quite different if you would ask people who have some disorders but they are a very difficult group to get a consensus.
>> Okay, thank you! Thank you so much! Yes, please. Give all of the presenters a round of applause. So now there is a break and I hope to see you all 20 minutes past two for the final session in the computer conference. Thank you, everybody!

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