Research on the Evaluation Index System of the Construction of Communities Suitable for Aging by the Fuzzy Delphi Method

Abstract

In order to cope with the rapidly aging society and the Chinese traditional idea of old-age care, community home-based care has become a major mode of care for the aged in China, and the construction of communities suitable for the aged has also become the focus of the whole society. In order to build an objective and scientific evaluation index system of communities suitable for aging, the hierarchical structure and relative important values of the indicators for the assessment were obtained through data text rooted coding and the fuzzy Delphi expert questionnaire survey. The results prove that: the evaluation index system of communities suitable for aging consists of 4 criteria (i.e., humanistic care, public environment, health care, and economic security), 14 sub-criteria, and 48 evaluation indexes. The important values of the four criteria are “health care” (7.35), “public environment” (7.18), “humanistic care” (6.92), and “economic security” (6.87). This shows that with the aging of the elderly and the decline of physical function, health care is the most important material basis for community home care, and is also the core criterion for the construction of communities suitable for aging. Of the 48 important values of the evaluation indexes, “setting up an emergency assistance system” (7.89), “ensuring the accessibility of roads” (7.79), and “handling related affairs” (7.60) ranked the highest. This shows that the protection of the physical and mental health of the elderly and the rights and interests of the elderly are the core values of the construction of communities suitable for aging. This study believes that through constructing an evaluation index system of the communities suitable for aging, the past general constructions suitable for aging according to the standard can be further clarified through the scientific procedure of the ‘community suitable for aging construction evaluation method’, and be a reference for the academic and practical fields.