Elderly People in eHealth: Who Are They?

Creators: Rockmann, Robert and Gewald, Heiko
Title: Elderly People in eHealth: Who Are They?
Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
Event Title: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Adoption and Usage of Information and Communication Technologies in Healthcare by the Elderly (auICTH)
Event Location: Berlin
Projects: IDI, FISnet
Date: 2015
Divisions: Informationsmanagement
Abstract: eHealth 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.
Forthcoming: No
Citation:

Rockmann, Robert and Gewald, Heiko (2015) Elderly People in eHealth: Who Are They? In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Adoption and Usage of Information and Communication Technologies in Healthcare by the Elderly (auICTH), Berlin.

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