The relationship between spatial characteristics and social interaction of older adults with dementia in nursing homes

Various factors can contribute to the improvement of quality of life among the older adults living in facilities, but promoting social interactions can enhance the quality of life. There are some studies conducted on social interaction of institutionalized older adults, but only few studies in terms of spatial configuration. Therefore, this study intends to find the social interaction of the older adults in two nursing homes with different sizes and layouts, and to investigate the relationship between spatial characteristics and social interaction. The subjects of this study are two nursing facilities located in Seoul, Korea. The methodologies of this study include snapshots for observing social interaction and VGA technique for visual accessibility. As results, it was found that social interaction occurred more frequently in the large-scale facility, case 2. However, there is a weak negative relationship between the social interactions and the visual accessibility in case 1 only; it means that the interactions frequently occur in relatively segregated spaces. This study has its significance as it is the first combined study to understand the social interaction pattern of the older residents in connection with the spatial configuration of nursing homes in South Korea as a quantitative analysis method.