[Assessment method for supporting programs for social activities of the elderly by city, town and village governments in Japan].

OBJECTIVES: The authors developed a questionnaire to assess the activities of supporting programs for social activities for the elderly conducted by city, town and village governments, based on the number of such programs. This study aims to examine the validity of the questionnaire. METHODS: We conducted a study of 145 cities, towns and villages from two prefectures in Japan using the questionnaire. The questionnaire asks government officers whether they had each of 32 programs, and the number of programs in total, as well as each of four domains of social activities (i.e., employment, social participation/volunteering, education/training, individual activities) were calculated. They were also asked to classify each of the programs into one of four domains of social activity to which the programs were most related; they were asked to rate how active the programs were for each domain in their community. To examine the validity of the questionnaire, the following indicators were assessed: (1) proportion of reported programs which were not covered by the questionnaire; (2) concordance of classification of programs into four domains of social activity with those judged by government officers; (3) correlations between number of programs and self-rated activity levels by government officers; and (4) correlations of number programs with characteristics of cities, towns or villages. RESULTS: The results indicated that the list of programs covered most of the programs. Proposed classification of programs into four domains of social activities which they are most related to agreed with judgments by officials. The number of programs positively correlated with self-rated activity levels by officers for employment and education/training domains in both prefectures; and for social participation/volunteering and individual activities in one of the prefecture. The numbers of programs for employment of the elderly positively correlated with the total population of the community, number of staffs, proportion of people employed in the tertiary industries and total budget for social welfare of the elderly; it negatively correlated with proportion of people employed in the primary industries. CONCLUSION: It is suggested that the list of programs in the questionnaire is applicable and assessment based on the number of programs by four social activity domains is valid to some extent in either prefecture. The questionnaire can be improved further, e.g., by adding other programs to the list.