Assessing the impact of municipal age-friendly policy implementation in Calgary, Alberta

In 2015, the City of Calgary launched its Seniors Age-Friendly Strategy, aiming to provide all people lifelong opportunities to thrive. Various actions are being introduced into the community, and there is a desire to assess both how well they are working and whether they are contributing to achieving age-friendliness. City personnel have identified several measures to evaluate the effectiveness of these actions. The CLSA has been identified as a valuable data source, since baseline data was collected just prior to introducing the strategy, and data will be collected regularly for 20 years. Our proposed study will use CLSA data to examine baseline measures of interest to the municipal government on older (55+) Calgarians. Our study will also assess the extent to which CLSA data represents the actual Calgary population via comparisons with Census data. This information will inform the potential utility of CLSA data in evaluating the impact of municipal policies and procedures by tracking selected measures over time.

We compared baseline socio-demographic characteristics of Calgary CLSA participants in the comprehensive cohort with those derived from the 2011 National Household Survey and 2016 Canadian Census. Calgary’s CLSA sample was representative for age, sex and Indigenous identity but was not fully representative for ethnic diversity, internal, migration, education and income when compared to the true population. We suggest that researchers, planners, policy makers, and others using municipal level CLSA data should consider representativeness of their CLSA sample when interpreting findings.