Social Support and Social Satisfaction for Older Adults in Online Virtual Communities

We argue that older adults experience psychological changes based on significant events in their lives, and that their usage of online virtual communities (VCs) is driven by their varying needs for social support and social satisfaction. We propose that socioemotional choices they make, particularly their use of online VCs, are driven by a combination of need for social support and social satisfaction. We use survey data collected from older adults participating in three online VCs focused on retirement life in China. We expect our study to fill the gap in the literature on online VCs by providing insights into the motivation and satisfaction of older users in using online VCs, which can help in designing online virtual communities that can better cater to the psychological needs of older people

Elderly People in eHealth: Investigating Internet Self-Efficacy and the Role of Occupational Internet Usage

eHealth initiatives are constantly evolving, supporting consumers to take active control of their health and well-being through access to health information and through communication with experts and peers via the internet. Although particularly elderly people could benefit from eHealth, they often feel unable to use the internet. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we seek to understand how internet self-efficacy affects the usage of eHealth among elderly people. As many elderly people nowadays are required to use the internet in their workplaces, we aim to explore the impact of prior occupational internet usage on self-efficacy. By conducting a representative study on 2,000 participants in the age of 55 to 75 in Germany, we seek to contribute to the knowledge on eHealth adoption and social inclusion of elderly people, as well as on prior occupational internet usage as a novel determinant of internet self-efficacy

Elderly People in eHealth: Who are they?

AbstracteHealth initiatives are constantly evolving, supporting consumers to take active control of their health and well-being through access to health information via the Internet. Although particularly elderly people could benefit from eHealth, they often pose resistance and anxiety towards new technologies. Since modern technologies become increasingly complex, elderly's mental models on how technology works might be not supported. Today's technologies are often designed without paying attention to the circumstances of elderly people, thereby limiting the technologies’ intended effectiveness. As such it becomes apparent to understand who these ‘elderly people’ actually are and how individual characteristics shape elderly's perceptions and behavior in using eHealth. Consequently, we seek to investigate how broad personality traits (i.e. the ‘big five’) affect perceptions of elderly of being generally able to use the Internet (i.e. self-efficacy) in order to use the Internet for health-related purposes. By conducting a quantitative study among elderly people, we aim to contribute to the knowledge on relationships between personality traits and self-efficacy. We further expect to provide new insights on elderly's personality in order to design effective systems for the growing segment of older adults

Metric for Designing Inclusive User Interfaces: Action Research on the Implementation of the Care Act 2014

This action research is aimed at creating metric for inclusive user interfaces that provide are intuitive and mimic the natural conversation to bridge the skill gap between skilled users and novice users. This metric will help user interface designer to measure the ‘inclusivity’ of their design, thus producing services that as easy as an IKEA manual. This action research is conducted in Nottinghamshire County Council who invested resources to create online channel that enables customers to apply online for social care services, while recognising that their customer base is very diverse. The council adopted an inclusive design strategy to cater to all users with different needs and computer literacy levels

Mature Adults’ Use of Digital Health Services The Role of Prior Computer Experience on eHealth Adoption

In the light of aging societies in developed economies, the use of digital health services by mature adults becomes an ever more important issue. Although multiple offerings exist, the widespread use of these solutions is still considerably low. To the current date, research has not yet a good understanding on the specific behavior of senior citizens when it comes to adoption and use of eHealth services. Our research addresses this issue by analyzing the effect previous work experience with Information Technology (IT) has on the eHealth use of retired citizens. Using a paper based questionnaire, 132 respondents provided information on their previous work exposure to IT, their computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety, and use of digital health services. Our findings underline the strong impact previous work with IT has on eHealth use regardless how long the respondent is already retired. We also found that outcome expectations are a strong mediator on the relationship between self-efficacy and the use of digital health services. This implies that seniors feel that they have all capabilities to use digital health services but only if they see a need to do so

A Conceptual Examination of Distrusting Beliefs in Older Adults about the Internet

Older adults are adopting the Internet in increasing numbers today. At the same time they are also experiencing uncertainties about their safety and information privacy on this medium. Several media reports have shown a rising number of incidents involving older Internet user, that indicate lack of awareness of Internet-related security and privacy issues. This conceptual paper provides a framework to help understand the reasons why older adults might distrust the commercial websites in general. Based on established theoretical frameworks about trust, distrust and aging-based technology adoption challenges, we develop several postulates to explain distrusting beliefs that can result in precautious Internet behavior. Implications of this framework will be found in building educational programs and interventions for the population over the age of 55

Elderly’s Perception about The Value of Assistive Technologies for their Daily Living: Impacting Factors and Theoretical Support

This paper presents a review of relevant studies found in a systematic search for research on the elderly’s perception about the value of assistive technologies. We found that the majority of papers did not use any theory to frame the research question or explain their results. We suggest that invariably occurs in benefits realization through the use of empowering technologies designed to provide training to help older people maintain their functional capabilities. Maintaining these functional capabilities is important for people to live independently for longer and in order to assess the benefits more quickly; we suggest researchers use the capability approach. The existing theories of adoption appear to be much more suited to supportive technologies that aid elderly in their functional disabilities. This is mainly due to the fact that the immediate benefits i.e. usefulness of these technologies can be seen more easily compared to empowering technologies

The Digital Divide - Any Reasons for enthusiasm? The Case of Austria

The paper presents a secondary analysis of the Austrian data of a Eurobarometer (conducted in all member states of the EU) data set and addresses questions of penetration and usage of new information and communication technologies. Before going into the empirical analysis we provide a brief theoretical analysis of the digital divide concept, based on a literature overview. Up to now, research on digital divide analyized predictors of this phenomenon only separately without considering interaction effects. Our analysis aims to develop various types of Users and Non-Users by combining demographics and information about internet usage in a cluster analysis. Results give strong support to consider Users and Non-Users not as homogenous groups in future research. A more differentiated view has to be applied: combinations of attributes can yield in deprivation in a double or even tripel sense, so that some groups are harder to reach by ICT-policies than others

Demographic Awareness and E-Government – A Quantitative Analysis of Germany and Japan

Innovating public administrations, for instance by means of E-Government, becomes an increasingly important issue in order to satisfy growing demands of citizens and to reduce costs of public service provision. Demographic change in industrialized countries, namely societal aging and depopulation, has various influences on the development of E-Government strategies. On the one hand, elderly citizens use services of their local government more often than people of younger age-groups. On the other hand, they are less likely to use complex electronic services in general and E-Government in specific. In addition, municipalities have to deal with increased cost pressure and the aging of the workforce within their local administrations as a result of the demographic change. Our quantitative analysis focuses on identifying the perceived importance of problems related to the demographic change in German and Japanese public administrations, addresses what areas of reform are related to these problems and points out implications for the development of innovation strategies by means of E-Government. We contrast the developments in both countries with respect to both demographic situation and public innovation in order to derive possible implications for the future

CLAIM THE NAME: NAMES OF IT SOLUTIONS AND THE INFLUENCE ON OLDER ADULTS

The number of older adults as Information Technology (IT) users is increasing. While attention is already being paid to the design of IT solutions for older adults, the names of IT solutions have received little attention. It is important that the name does not convey negative attributes. In the case of older adults, stereotypes pose a challenge since they can lead to rejection of potentially helpful IT solutions. In this paper, we therefore propose a model for a stereotype-free naming process in the conceptual background of sociotechnical systems. The model will be developed and tested according to a design science research approach. The final model will be adaptable for further target groups to name IT solutions free from stereotypes