Abstract
This study explores the association of “Sensory Environment” and “Playfulness” with Depression and Cognition (SEPDC) among older adults living in high-density public housing neighborhoods in Singapore. The research conducted cross-sectional surveys with 400 adults aged 55 and above living in 20 such neighborhoods. Path analyses suggest that sensory environment (multi-sensory richness of a place and its capacity to engage) and playfulness (personality trait that enables rendering situations as playful) are associated with reduced depressive symptoms, memory problems, and loneliness in older adults, mediated by the increased “neighborhood cohesion” and sense of “at-homeness.” Hence, sensory environment and playfulness are critical for healthful aging in place and should be considered carefully for better design and planning of aging-friendly housing neighborhoods.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the residents who kindly participated in this study, many of whom were at an advanced age.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data collected and analyzed in this study are not publicly available, but they may be provided by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
1 Cronbach’s alpha refers to a widely used measure of scale reliability (internal consistency). We accepted only excellent (α ≥ 0.9) and good (007 ≤ α > 0.9) reliability levels (Streiner, Citation2003).
2 Some of the other instruments to measure playfulness include: the “Adult Playfulness Scale” (Glynn & Webster, Citation1992), the “Playfulness Scale for Adults” (PSA) (Schaefer & Greenberg, Citation1997), the Playfulness Scale (PS) (O’Connell et al., Citation2000), the “Short Measure of Adult Playfulness” (SMAP) (Proyer, Citation2012) and the OLIW-playfulness questionnaire (Proyer, Citation2017).
3 Some of the other validated instruments available to assess memory and/or memory problems are: the Everyday Memory Questionnaire-Revised (EMQ-R; Royle & Lincoln, Citation2008), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., Citation2005), Mild Cognitive Impairment Screen (MCIS; Shankle et al., Citation2005), and CogEvo (Ichii et al., Citation2020), among others.
4 UCLA Loneliness Scale and UCLA 3-item Loneliness Scale are the most commonly used in assessing loneliness among older adults. Among some other frequently used scales are: The Rasch-Type Loneliness Scale (RTLS) or De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale (DJGLS) (Gierveld & Tilburg, Citation2006) and Lubben Social Network Scale-6 (Lubben et al., Citation2006).
5 There are numerous other instruments to screen for depression and measure its manifestation and severity, such as Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) (Radloff, Citation1977), and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) (Trajković et al., Citation2011), among others.
6 Other neighborhood cohesion scales include, among others, the Neighborhood Cohesion Instrument (NCI; Buckner, Citation1988), Social Cohesion Scale (SCS; Sampson et al., Citation1997), and Brief Sense of Community Scale (Huang & Wong, Citation2014).
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), USA; and the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore under the National Innovation Challenge (NIC) Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award 2021 (grant number: MOH-000749-00). EQUIGENESIS UrbanLab is supported by a Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation and Canadian Institute of Health Research (CMHC-CIHR) Fellowship awarded to D. R. Y. Gan.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3672-9763
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