Development of a Korea-specific Home Safety Assessment Tool for the Elderly

Abstract

With the advent of aging society,the expectations for welfare servicesare continuously on the rise. In this context, it is necessary to evaluate the home environment suitable for the common living environment in Korea. This study was conducted to develop a Korea-specific home safety assessment tool for the elderly and to verify its reliability and validity. After collecting existing home safety assessment items, we performed a Delphi survey with an expert panel. We selected 57 preliminary items by analyzing the content validity ratio, convergence, consensus, andconcurrence, followed by data collection from 116 older adults with the preliminary items. By analyzing the internal reliability and construct validity of the assessment items composing each factor, we developed an assessment tool consisting of 55 items grouped together into nine factors, namely, porch/entrance, living room/bedroom (movement + floor), bathroom, kitchen, utility room and balcony, interior and exterior stairs, prevention of accidents (emergency + general).The Korea-specific home safety assessment tool for the elderly developed in this study is expected to be useful for creating a safe home environment for community-based older adults.