Extending the Active Ageing Index to Hong Kong Using a Mixed-Method Approach: Feasibility and Initial Results

Abstract

The rapid demographic transition heightens the urgency to develop a monitoring mechanism for policymakers to evaluate the impact of population ageing. The Active Ageing Index (AAI), developed for 28 European Union countries, has served as a global quantitative toolkit to benchmark the diverse experience of active ageing and older people’s potential. One can presume that the experiences of Asian elders are different to those with Europeans who have different cultural backgrounds. Thus, an approach that incorporates Eastern culture needs to be developed. In this paper, key findings of the focus group discussions with older men and women across the territories of Hong Kong are summarized. The lay perceptions of active ageing in the general public are identified and compared with the constituents of the European AAI. Also, the relative importance of the indicators given by the older Chinese people were differentiated by their demographic characteristics. The extent to which the older Chinese citizens and the expert groups of the AAI revealed similar judgement on the relative importance of the indicators of active ageing are also examined. The results reported in this paper illustrate how the mixed-method approach could serve as an appropriate method in extending the active ageing research in the Asia-Pacific region. The insights obtained would inform the construction of a more meaningful AAI in the Asian context. It is argued that incorporating the perspective of older people to encapsulate the defining characteristics of active ageing will lead to a wider acceptance of the AAI in a policy-setting mechanism.