Spatial Patterns of Objective and Perceived Measures of Age-Friendly Community

Neighborhood environment is often characterized using secondary spatial data while qualitative research surveys provide a measure of how residents perceive their community. This study aimed to assess where objective spatial measures of the neighborhood environment, from the Allegheny County Age-Friendly Community Index (AFCI), and subjective survey responses from the Survey of Older Adults in Allegheny County agree and disagree. The University of Pittsburgh, University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR) conducted the survey from November 2021 to May 2022 with1,299 adults aged fifty-five and older in Allegheny County, PA. The AFCI consists of tract-level percentile ranks calculated from spatial indices of built environment, transportation, housing, community services, and social participation. An Optimized Hot Spot Analysis (OHSA) run in ArcGIS Pro 6.2™ generated spatial clusters of positive and negative age-friendly measures using both spatial indicator variables and survey responses. The Hot Spot Analysis Comparison tool analyzed the similarity between OHSA outputs for matched variable pairs and visualizes geographic areas of agreement and disagreement between the two measures. Link to AFCI interactive map of Domain Rankings: https://afci.ucsur.pitt.edu/map.php