Associations of Meaning of Home and Housing-Related Control Beliefs with Changes in Symptoms and Quality of Life: A Prospective Study Among Younger-Old Adults in Sweden

Abstract

Feeling in control of one’s environment, and perceiving one’s home as meaningful, have been found to be associated with health and wellbeing among older adults. As longitudinal studies of younger-old adults are lacking, this study aimed to investigate whether this association exists over time among older adults around retirement age. This study used longitudinal data from a random cohort of older adults in southern Sweden collected over a period of around 6 years (~2010-2016). In total, 329 community dwelling older adults, ages 65-76 (190 women and 139 men) participated in the study. Meaningfulness of one’s home was assessed by the Meaning of Home questionnaire, feelings of control of one’s home environment by the Housing-Related Control Beliefs questionnaire, symptom severity by a symptom checklist, and quality of life by Short-Form 12. Analyses was performed by stepwise General Linear Regression models. Housing-Related Control Beliefs was not significantly associated with changes in quality of life. Meaning of Home was found to be significantly associated with changes in gastrointestinal (B= 0.039, p= 0.031) and metabolism (B= 0.084, p< 0.000) symptoms. However, there were inconsistencies among the subscales of the instrument as some were negatively associated, and others were positively associated, with the change. The overall findings therefore suggest that the perceived home environment does not have a significant role in preventing symptoms, or in maintaining or improving quality of life, among older adults around retirement age. This finding is of importance to further develop theoretical understandings of the environments’ role in healthy ageing.