Effects of environmental modification on activities of daily living, social participation and quality of life in the older adults: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to provide evidence of the benefits and effects of environmental modification intervention on activities of daily living, quality of life and social participation in older adults.

Methods: This study searched and used randomized controlled trial research studies from the databases of MEDLINE, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library. A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted using the Jadad scale, risk of bias and the patient, intervention, comparison, outcome (PICO) process. The domains of impact considered in this meta-analysis were activities of daily living, quality of life and social participation. The analysis was completed with the Review Manager software 5.3.

Results: Jadad scores of collected studies were 3–4 in seven studies and 2 in one study, which means that most studies had high levels of quality. This study comprised of 733 subjects in the experimental group and 672 subjects in the control group. The effect size of environmental interventions on basic activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living and overall activities of daily living were 0.37, 0.65 and 0.47, respectively. Meanwhile, the environmental intervention was neither effective on quality of life nor social participation.

Conclusions: Environmental modifications are effective in facilitating the daily life activities of older adults. This kind of intervention is shown to be useful for enhancing life performance. In order to confirm intervention effects on the quality of life and social participation of older adults, studies should conduct environmental modifications interventions that take into account contexts such as individual characteristics, lifestyle and physical activities.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Environmental modifications are effective in improving older adults’ performance of daily activities (ADL).

• Appropriate environmental modification interventions should be considered before the quality of life (QoL) and levels of social participation of older adults decline.

Keywords:

• Meta-analysis
• older adults
• activities of daily living
• environmental modification
• social participation
• quality of life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the government of Korea (MSIP; Ministry of Science, ICT, & Future Planning) (NRF-2017R1C1B5017510).