Abstract

Selection of appropriate and important criteria for a community to measure its ‘age-friendliness’ has now become very much complex and context specific. This debate has gained momentum globally and specifically for developing countries like India due to rapid increase of proportion of elderly to all age-groups and simultaneous breakdown of traditional joint family system threatening their independence. In a resource scarce setting it is cumbersome to achieve the desired outcome level of all criteria and at one go and therefore needs selection and prioritisation of important ones contributing significantly to the ‘age-friendliness index’ of the community. The widely used techniques such as ‘Delphi’, ‘Nominal Group Technique’ and other similar techniques have their own limitations in this selection process. This study uses ‘Modified Fuzzy Delphi’ method unlike other methods and proves to be the most scientific one in terms of quantification and selection by a threshold value. It is different from traditional Delphi technique in that ‘error level is reduced’ using fuzzy sets where quantification of expert’s opinion completely reflects their experience. The results showed that criteria identified by this process holds good for evaluating age-friendliness of the community. It also indicated that independent living capability of a person is the most important criteria followed by safety and security of the community environment though other criteria are more or less accountable.

Keywords: Age-friendliness; Age-groups; Criteria; Fuzzy Delphi; Threshold