Empowering the elderly population through ICT-based activities

Author: Hur, Mann Hyung

Description: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on elderly people who have adopted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and participated in ICT-based activities, and explore variables associated with their individual and collective empowerment by using data collected by a questionnaire survey.

Design/methodology/approach: A set of 14 questions was developed to measure older adults’ perceived psychological empowerment. A factor analysis was conducted to condense 14 individual variables into several large categories. Finally, a set of multiple regression analyses was employed to identify variables associated with the elderly’s individual and collective empowerment.

Findings: Three factors, including a sense of meaning; competence/self-determination; and collective empowerment were extracted from the 14 questions. Multiple regression models revealed that elderly empowerment is not a matter of social skills, ICT skills, or complementary skills, but is more likely to result from their being interested in ICT and ICT-based activities. Learning activities in ICT-based activities and participation frequency were found to be predictors of both meaning and competence/self-determination dimensions.

Research limitations/implications: The major finding of this study concerns the development of a measure that assesses three factors of empowerment in older adults, i.e., sense of meaning, competence/self-determination, and collective empowerment. This study represents an initial step in establishing the measure, and therefore, further work is needed to establish its psychometric properties, particularly external validity.

Subject headings: Behavior change; Self-efficacy; Information seeking behavior; IT capability

Publication year: 2016

Journal or book title: Information Technology & People

Volume: 29

Issue: 2

Pages: 318-333

Find the full text: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ITP-03-2015-0052/full/html

Find more like this one (cited by): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4262356625780796981&as_sdt=1000005&sciodt=0,16&hl=en

Serial number: 3708

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