This special issue comprises seven papers, focusing on environmental dimensions of relevance for occupational therapy research and practice. During recent years, the interest in research on e.g. physical and social dimensions of the environment and their influences on occupational performance has increased. By means of quantitative as well as qualitative methodology, the contributions present research findings of relevance for housing provision and health promotion in very old age as well as for occupational therapy interventions targeting persons with different types of disabilities. Six of the papers focus primarily on home environments, while one explicitly highlights how social environmental dimensions influence engagement in occupation.
First, a set of four papers present findings from the ENABLE-AGE Project, funded by the European Commission during 2002–2004. ENABLE-AGE was the first large-scale project involving occupational therapists in different countries in interdisciplinary gerontological research and had several major targets. Primarily, we were interested in relationships between objective and perceived housing and healthy ageing outcomes in very old age, with the ultimate goal to come up with results undergirding housing provision for senior citizens across Europe. In addition, the ENABLE-AGE Project sought to advance methodological quality in the assessment of home environments and very old people. Data were gathered in urban regions in five European countries representing economically well-developed “old” European Union (EU) member states (Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom), as well as “new” member states that joined the EU only in 2005 and are still in a period of major social and political transformation (Hungary, Latvia). In the ENABLE-AGE Consortium, occupational therapy constituted a core competence in terms of conceptual and methodological input as well as for data collection and analysis. Three of the papers presented in this issue were based on data from the Swedish ENABLE-AGE sample, while the fourth is a cross-national contribution using Swedish, German, and Latvian data. It should be noted that in the last of the set of ENABLE-AGE papers, German gerontologists were the prime authors, introducing the concept of “housing-related control beliefs” into occupational therapy. As demonstrated by our findings, this concept has the potential to increase our professional understanding of older people's housing situation.
The next two papers concern a very common occupational therapy intervention, namely housing adaptation. Touching on issues of social support, Johansson and co-workers examined the relationship between performance of activities of daily living, housing and living situation, and the home modification applied for. Thereafter, describing a methodological approach to evaluation of housing adaptations based on a former PhD thesis project, Fänge and Iwarsson present a set of evaluation recommendations for practice and research.
In the final paper, the social environmental dimension is explicitly in focus. Nyman et al. explored the impact of social interactions on engagement in occupations among persons with rheumatoid arthritis, and present findings with implications for interventions in this field.
I am very honoured that I was invited to serve as guest editor for this special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy. I would like to thank my co-workers and colleagues for excellent cooperation and important contributions to the development of occupational therapy in research and practice fields focusing on environmental dimensions and their influence on human occupation and health.