This research program has three major aims.
The first aim i s to develop an environmental assessment procedure to assess the sociophysical environments of sheltered care settings for the elderly. This procedure will assess architectural and physical design variables, dimensions of organizational structure, background characteristics of patients and staff, behavior settings, and treatment climate. The procedure will be useful in monitoring the quality of the patient environment.
The second aim i s to carry out detailed case studies of patients who are transferred from one sheltered care setting to another. We hope to specify how environmental characteristics actually affect patients' mood, functioning and behavior.
The third aim i s to explore the practical utility of information regarding sheltered care setting. Systematic feedback of environmental assessment procedures will be used to help staff monitor and improve the quality of care in their treatment settings. We will also attempt to enhance patient adaptation by using environmental assessment data to compile better descriptions of geriatric sheltered care setting. The basic rationale underlying this work is that adequate prediction of patient functioning will be enhanced by the development of techniques by which sheltered care settings for the elderly can be systematically characterized. These methods should make it possible to predict criteria of effective functioning from characteristics of treatment settings, as well as from characteristics of individual patients. Perhaps most importantly, the quality of care for the elderly patient could be monitored over time, and staff would be provided with guidelines by which they could improve program effectiveness.
