Social Exclusion in Later Life: Towards an Age Specific Social Exclusion Measure

Background: In research insufficient attention is given to developing an old age social exclusion scale. This contribution therefore focuses both on identifying dimensions relating to social exclusion in later life and the construction of an old age specific social exclusion measure. Methods: A systematic review was performed by identifying relevant studies through searches of databases (e.g. Web of Science & Sociological Abstracts). Only studies addressing social exclusion or inclusion among home dwelling older adults were incorporated. Because of the heterogeneity of the studies’ methods a narrative synthesis was conducted to review the findings. Based on this review we constructed a social exclusion measure using data from the Belgian Ageing Studies, a survey among home dwelling older adults in Flanders. In order to develop this scale, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted followed by a confirmatory factor analysis using the Lavaan package in R. Results: The review revealed that different dimensions are used to measure social exclusion in later life. Participation, social relations and exclusion from services are the most occurring dimensions followed by financial resources, material resources, neighbourhood exclusion and housing. The global model, including items for ageism, participation, financial exclusion, neighbourhood exclusion, access to services, housing and social relations, provided a good fit (CFI=.955, TLI=.948, RMSEA=.028, N=34.658) Conclusions: Future research could investigate the measurement equivalence of the proposed scale. This instrument could also be applied to identify geographical differences in later life social exclusion and to examine individual and environmental determinants.