Geriatric Dwelling Depression Measurement Based on Projective Image Analysis Modeling

The growth of the older population is expected to further increase social problems associated with population aging, such as isolation, poverty, and depression. The emerging issues associated with the older population are also expected to provide further momentum on studies about the dwelling environment as factors that ensure the health of older people as well as improve their quality of life. Therefore, approaches for explaining the issues of the older age group should be diversified using a variety of factors and appropriate analytic tools. Studies on measuring depression have principally focused on assessing an objective self-report questionnaire, usually in a highly structured, textual form which may not reflect the cognitive impairment of older adults. The aim of this study was to define and measure dwelling depression among older adults in Korea. There are two specific hypotheses in this study as follows: (a) there will be statistically significant relationships with dwelling dissatisfaction and depression, and (b) dwelling depression tools containing text and images will be, respectively, assessment tools that have a good construct with content validity and reliability. In the first experiment, to define and measure dwelling depression, 301 people over 65 years old living in single and two-person households were surveyed using a text-based dwelling depression questionnaires from September 1-30, 2017. In the second experiment, to examine whether the projective image questionnaire could serve as a suitable replacement for the text-based questionnaires, the same participants were surveyed from January 22 to February 2, 2018. The results show that depression has a close correlation with dwelling dissatisfaction. In addition, the geriatric dwelling depression index (GDDI) based on the projective image was refined. Additionally, the projective image questionnaire has a close correlation with the text-based questionnaire. Finally, through ROC curve analysis, it was found that the projective image questionnaire can accurately predict a depression group. To this end, this preliminary study examined the validity of the projective image questionnaire in older adults to make this instrument feasible for older populations and to contribute to a profound understanding of geriatric depression due to the living environment. We hope they will provide a basis for further research on psychological diagnoses using projective images.