Overview of key findings

This study examined psychological, behavioral, and environmental correlates of comfort performing routine home maintenance among adults aged 50 years and older affiliated with a university-based lifelong learning program. In the adjusted model, better perceived stress management was associated with higher odds of reporting full comfort performing routine home maintenance independently. In contrast, greater perceived home-based support and older age were associated with lower odds of reporting full comfort. Gender was not significantly associated with the outcome. An ordinal logistic regression sensitivity analysis using the original three-category outcome produced a substantively similar pattern of findings, suggesting that the primary results were not solely an artifact of dichotomizing the outcome. Together, these findings suggest that task-specific confidence in aging-in-place activities may reflect both individual psychological resources and perceived support needs within the home environment.

Stress management interpretation

The positive association between perceived stress management and comfort performing routine home maintenance suggests that psychological self-regulation may be an important component of aging-in-place confidence. Routine home maintenance can involve planning, problem-solving, physical effort, financial decisions, and coordination with others. Adults who perceive themselves as better able to manage stress may also feel more capable of navigating these demands, even when specific maintenance tasks are challenging. This finding is consistent with a broader understanding of aging in place as a process shaped not only by physical function or environmental conditions, but also by perceived coping capacity and confidence in managing day-to-day demands.

Home based support interpretation

The negative association between perceived home-based support and full comfort performing routine home maintenance should be interpreted cautiously. Rather than suggesting that support itself reduces independence, this finding may indicate that participants who perceive greater need for home-based support also experience lower confidence in completing maintenance tasks independently. Home-based support may therefore function as a marker of underlying support needs, emerging functional limitations, household complexity, or awareness that certain tasks require assistance. From an aging-in-place perspective, this finding underscores the importance of distinguishing between support as a resource and support as an indicator of need. For some adults, access to home-based support may help preserve autonomy by enabling them to remain safely in their homes even when they are less comfortable completing all maintenance tasks on their own.

Age interpretation

The association between older age and lower odds of full comfort performing routine home maintenance is consistent with the possibility that task-specific confidence may change across later adulthood. Routine maintenance activities can require physical mobility, strength, balance, sustained energy, decision-making, and coordination with service providers. [Reference Chodzko-Zajko, Proctor and Fiatarone Singh4] As adults age, changes in health, function, household composition, or access to informal assistance may affect how comfortable they feel managing these responsibilities independently. This finding reinforces the importance of considering aging in place as a dynamic process rather than a fixed preference. Planning for home maintenance, safety, and support needs may be especially important before functional challenges become urgent.

Translational implications

These findings have implications for translational approaches to aging in place. At the individual level, interventions that strengthen coping, planning, stress management, and confidence may complement home modification or service-based approaches [Reference Owen, Berry and Brown8]. At the household and community levels, routine home maintenance may serve as an early indicator of emerging support needs before a crisis, injury, or forced relocation occurs. Community-based organizations, lifelong learning programs, health systems, and aging services providers may be well positioned to integrate practical aging-in-place education with screening or referral pathways related to home safety, maintenance burden, and support planning. Because this study was exploratory and cross-sectional, these findings should be viewed as hypothesis-generating. Future translational research should examine whether interventions that combine psychological self-management, home safety planning, and support navigation can improve aging-in-place confidence and reduce unmet home-based needs over time.

Strengths and limitations

This study has several strengths. First, it addresses aging in place from a translational perspective by focusing on task-specific functional confidence, a construct that connects individual behavior, perceived support, and the home environment. Second, the study draws on data from adults aged 50 years and older who were affiliated with a community-based lifelong learning program, providing insight into a population that may be actively engaged in planning for later-life health, independence, and home-based needs. Third, the analysis incorporated both psychological and environmental predictors, allowing stress management capacity and perceived home-based support to be examined together rather than in isolation. Finally, the revised analytic approach included an ordinal logistic regression sensitivity analysis using the original three-category outcome, which strengthened confidence that the primary binary findings were not solely an artifact of dichotomizing the outcome.

Several limitations should also be considered when interpreting these findings. First, this study used a cross-sectional design, which limits the ability to determine temporal ordering or causality. Although stress management capacity, perceived home-based support, and age were associated with comfort performing routine home maintenance, these findings should be interpreted as associations rather than evidence that these factors directly influence functional confidence.

Second, the study relied on self-reported survey data. Participants may have interpreted items differently, and responses may have been influenced by recall, social desirability, or individual differences in how respondents assess their own abilities and support needs. Several measures used in the analysis were study-specific single-item indicators rather than multi-item validated scales. While these items were useful for exploratory analysis, they may not capture the full complexity of stress management, home-based support, or functional confidence. In addition, perceived home-based support and stress management capacity were measured using ordered response categories and modeled numerically in the regression analyses. This approach supported a parsimonious exploratory model, but it assumes a consistent change in log odds across adjacent response categories and may not fully capture nonlinear or threshold effects.

Third, the primary outcome was originally measured using three ordered response categories: No, Somewhat, and Yes. For the primary analysis, the outcome was dichotomized to distinguish participants who reported full comfort performing routine home maintenance from those reporting less than full comfort. This approach aligned with the study’s focus on full task-specific confidence, but it also reduced variation in the original response structure. To address this limitation, an ordinal logistic regression sensitivity analysis was conducted using the original three-category outcome. The sensitivity analysis produced a substantively similar pattern of findings, which supports the robustness of the primary model while acknowledging the limitations of dichotomization.

Fourth, missing data reduced the analytic sample for multivariable modeling. Although 120 consenting respondents were available and 101 participants provided valid responses to the primary outcome, the final adjusted model included 77 participants with complete data on the outcome, perceived home-based support, stress management capacity, age, and gender. The final model included 31 outcome events among 77 complete cases. Given the modest number of events, the adjusted model was intentionally limited to four conceptually relevant predictors to reduce overfitting risk; however, model stability should still be interpreted cautiously.

Review of survey response patterns indicated that missing primary-outcome data were attributable to survey noncompletion: all 101 participants who completed the survey provided a response to the home-maintenance outcome, whereas the 19 consenting participants who discontinued the survey did not reach that item. Additional missingness was present for selected predictor variables and therefore reflected both survey attrition and item-level nonresponse. Because reasons for survey discontinuation and item nonresponse were not collected, the underlying missing-data mechanism cannot be definitively classified as missing completely at random, missing at random, or missing not at random from the observed data alone.

To assess potential selection bias associated with complete-case analysis, participants included in the final analytic model were compared with those excluded because of missing model variables on available demographic characteristics. No statistically significant differences were observed for age (Welch p = 0.264), gender (χ² [Reference Rowe and Kahn1] = 2.33, p = 0.127), Hispanic/Latino ethnicity (Fisher exact two-sided p = 1.000), or educational attainment categorized as bachelor’s degree or less versus graduate/professional degree (χ² [Reference Rowe and Kahn1] = 2.28, p = 0.131). These findings reduce concern regarding observable demographic differences between included and excluded participants but do not rule out bias associated with unobserved factors or the missing-data mechanism itself. Complete-case analysis was therefore retained, and the potential for bias related to missing data remains an important limitation.

Fifth, the sample was drawn from members of a university-affiliated lifelong learning program. Participants in such programs may differ from the broader population of adults aging in place in terms of education, health awareness, socioeconomic resources, digital access, and engagement with health-related learning opportunities. As a result, findings may not generalize to older adults with fewer resources, lower educational attainment, greater functional limitations, or less connection to community-based educational programs.

Finally, the survey was distributed through program-based email communication rather than public recruitment channels, and the survey was not indexed by search engines. However, the Qualtrics link was technically accessible to anyone with the link, and automated bot-detection, duplicate-detection, and reCAPTCHA tools were not enabled. Although responses were reviewed for consent, completion status, and availability of the primary outcome before analysis, the possibility of duplicate, ineligible, or otherwise invalid responses cannot be entirely ruled out.