Development of an elderly lifestyle profile: A Delphi survey of multidisciplinary health-care experts

OBJECTIVE: Lifestyle is considered as a key factor that affects one’s health and quality of life, and it has become the focus of increasing research interest worldwide. Research has shown that lifestyle is an important health determinant in preventive health care. However, lifestyle is a multifaceted construct and there is limited evidence regarding lifestyle assessment, which evaluates individuals’ multi-domain lifestyle factors. This study developed evaluation items for measuring the multifaceted lifestyle profile of community-dwelling older adult to prevent chronic disease and improve their health and quality of life. METHODS: Opinions from 21 experts with experience in older adults and lifestyle research were collected from December 2019 to January 2020. Three Delphi surveys were carried out, based on previous research. The first survey gathered opinions using a mix of open- and closed-ended questions regarding items of the older adults’ multifaceted lifestyle profile. The second was conducted after adding and modifying several items based on the first Delphi survey. In the third survey, after the results of the second one were presented to the expert panels, final opinions from the experts were converged. RESULTS: In total, 59 items were selected as the first Delphi results; 62 items were selected as the second results after adding and modifying the values below a content validity ratio of .42; and 62 items were selected as the third Delphi results. The average content validity ratio of the final Delphi survey was .92, the stability was .18, and the consensus was .80, which were all high. CONCLUSIONS: This study verified the content validity of the evaluation items for community-dwelling older adults’ multifaceted lifestyle profile. In the future, it is expected that after verifying the validity and reliability, this will be used as a standardized assessment tool in clinical environments.