Spatial and territorial appropriation of old-people's-home residents' rooms

This exploratory survey aimed at determining the spatial and territorial fa ctors used by elderly people when entering an old people's home and illustr ating how these variables could be referred to two spatial and territorial appropriation processes. One hundred and two residents were asked to descri be their rooms and to fill in a life satisfaction rating scale adapted by B lais, Vallerand, Pelletier and Briere (1989), The findings highlighted two distinct appropriation processes, that is to say a spatial appropriation-di sappropriation process and a territorial disappropriation-reappropriation o ne. The respective predictors of these two processes are on the one hand th e life satisfaction ratio, age and sex; and on the other hand the represent ation the elderly person has of his/her own autonomy as well as the evaluat ion of the gap between the elderly person's satisfaction with his/her past and present life.