Extended Abstract
Aims: Population ageing has increased the importance of residential care environments that support older adults not only in terms of safety, accessibility and care, but also in relation to autonomy, continuity of identity, meaningful daily activities, memory and a sense of home. Prior evidence remains fragmented across physical, social and psychological domains. The present study conceptualized evocative architecture as a relational approach in which environmental features become meaningful when they are perceivable and usable, allow a degree of choice and control, and connect present experience with familiar routines, memories, identity and relationships. Environment-behavior synomorphy was used to explain structural congruence between patterns of action and environmental components. The primary aim was therefore to explain and content-validate the components of evocative architecture based on synomorphy. Content validation was defined specifically as expert appraisal of the adequacy of coverage of the eight proposed components and the necessity, relevance and clarity of the items operationalizing them. A secondary aim was to examine internal consistency and between-centre differences in the field implementation of the 27-item structure; the study did not claim construct validation.
Materials & Methods: The research was applied in purpose and descriptive-analytical, exploratory and comparative in design. Component formulation combined theoretical review, semi-structured interviews, environmental observation and item development. Content validation was conducted at two levels using five direct expert forms completed by specialists in architecture and ageing environments, architecture and environmental psychology, gerontological nursing, occupational therapy/rehabilitation, and technical management of elderly care facilities. At the component level, experts rated the adequacy of content coverage of each of the eight dimensions on a four-point scale. At the item level, each of the 27 items was rated for necessity, relevance and clarity. Item-level content validity, scale-level average content validity and universal agreement, and the content validity ratio were calculated from the expert ratings. Five additional interview-based forms that had been reconstructed from previous field interviews and subsequently checked by responsible centre staff were treated only as supplementary qualitative evidence and were excluded from numerical content-validity calculations. The field dataset comprised 23 older residents from four residential care centres in Tabriz. For comparative reporting, the centres were anonymized as C1 (n=5), C2 (n=8), C3 (n=4) and C4 (n=6). These codes are research identifiers only and do not indicate rank or quality. Field data were analyzed separately for internal consistency and comparative assessment. Cronbach's alpha was used for reliability. Between-centre comparisons were conducted with Kruskal-Wallis tests; significant omnibus results were followed by Mann-Whitney U comparisons with Holm correction, and epsilon-squared was reported as an effect-size measure.
Findings: At the component level, the mean adequacy-of-coverage rating was 3.925 out of 4. Six dimensions received a mean score of 4.00; calmness/sense of home/willingness to stay received 3.60 and social connection/visits/support received 3.80. At the item level, item-level content-validity values ranged from 0.80 to 1.00; 26 items had complete expert agreement on relevance and item 27 had a value of 0.80. The scale-level average was 0.993, universal agreement was 0.963, and the clarity index was 1.00 for all items. The content validity ratio was 1.00 for 22 items, 0.60 for items 5, 25 and 26, and 0.20 for items 9 and 27. Thus, the framework showed very high content coverage and relevance, while five items showed lower expert consensus on necessity and were treated as content-sensitive items without undermining the coverage of their corresponding components. In the independent field analysis, the overall questionnaire showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=0.920), with dimension-level alphas ranging from 0.624 to 0.962. Sensory comfort had the highest mean (4.41), followed by nature and outdoor space (3.91), movement/accessibility/legibility/safety (3.83), and social connection/visits/support (3.75). Memory/association/continuity with past life (2.59) and calmness/sense of home/willingness to stay (2.72) were lowest. Kruskal-Wallis tests showed significant centre differences in movement/accessibility/legibility/safety (H=12.184, p=0.007), sensory comfort (H=8.909, p=0.031), nature/outdoor space (H=12.723, p=0.005), and social connection/visits/support (H=8.744, p=0.033). After Holm correction, C2 versus C3 remained significant for movement/accessibility/legibility/safety (adjusted p=0.047) and nature/outdoor space (adjusted p=0.044).
Conclusion: The results support the content validity of the proposed eight-component framework, particularly in terms of coverage, relevance and clarity. The lower consensus on necessity for five item formulations was interpreted as a content-sensitive finding rather than evidence against the corresponding components, because component coverage was assessed independently. The field findings provide complementary evidence of high overall internal consistency and show that some dimensions distinguish between the residential settings included in the study. The combined findings support a relational interpretation of evocative architecture in which basic environmental qualities such as sensory comfort, accessibility and contact with nature are important but are not sufficient by themselves to account for the broader relationship between environment, action and experience. The framework organizes the components into three interconnected theoretical levels-perception and use, choice and control, and meaning and continuity-with synomorphy functioning as the linking mechanism. The main contribution of the study is therefore the conceptual formulation and content-based support of an eight-component framework that translates the relationship between environmental qualities, action possibilities and experienced meaning into researchable indicators for residential environments of older adults.