The use of Community Mapping methodology among community-dwelling elders in Hong Kong

Abstract

Aims and objectives: This presentation describes the experience and process of using Community Mapping as elicitation for qualitative interviews with community-dwelling elders. Background: Community-Mapping or Qualitative GIS is a research methodology that allows participants of the research being co-researcher of the project and enable them to incorporate their qualitative data into GIS application. To date, this methodology has been more widely used in adolescent and children population groups but rarely on the elderly population. Methods: Four 1:5000 topographic colour maps combining to be one big map (Size:150 cm x 120 cm) with 3D photo image on representative architectural buildings placed on map were used along with interview to explore community-dwelling elders’ active locations, their awareness of the locations of elderly-friendly exercise equipment available in the neighbourhood. The interview first started with mapping activities then followed by in-depth qualitative interview. The whole process was video recorded. Results and Discussion: A total of 15 community-dwelling elders with age 62-88 years old (mean = 73±7.9) participated in the study. While some of them reported that their visions were not good enough when they were asked to complete the mapping task, observations from video showed that most of the participants (73.3%) could successfully completed the mapping activity and referred locations to researcher with assistance from researcher. Only 4 out of 15 participants (26.7%) referred locations to researcher without using the map. Conclusion: This study showed that Community-mapping methodology could be applied to community-dwelling elders, only small portion of them might not get use to refer locations with map. For elders who are not used to use map, other spatial methods like photo-voice or walk-along interviews might be more appropriate research methodology.