Elderly People in eHealth: Who are they?

Abstract

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.