Fear of falling: Scoping review and topic analysis using natural language processing

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Public Health
• Rehabilitation Science

Background:

• Fear of falling (FoF) significantly impacts older adults' quality of life and increases fall risk.
• Existing systematic reviews address specific FoF domains, but a comprehensive scoping review is lacking.
• A broad overview is needed to map the research landscape, identify gaps, and suggest future directions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a comprehensive scoping review of the literature on fear of falling in older adults.
• To identify key research topics, gaps in knowledge, and opportunities for interdisciplinary research.
• To create a conceptual map of the fear of falling research area.

Main Methods:

• Adherence to PRISMA-ScR guidelines for systematic searching across multiple databases (Cochrane, CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Scopus, Web of Science).
• Screening of 969 titles and abstracts.
• Application of Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) for topic identification and conceptual mapping after text pre-processing (stop word removal, stemming, TF-IDF vectorization).

Main Results:

• Identification of seven main topics within fear of falling research.
• Dominant focus on physical health factors, specifically balance and gait.
• Limited attention to cognitive, psychological, social, and environmental factors influencing FoF.
• Under-exploration of demographic factors beyond gender and age.

Conclusions:

• A need exists for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of fear of falling.
• Future research should address understudied areas, including psychological, social, and environmental determinants.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with social sciences, is recommended to broaden FoF research scope.