IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijnvor/v13y2013i1p5-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of online health information in the lives of Finns aged 65 to 79 years

Author

Listed:
  • Kristina Eriksson-Backa

Abstract

Older adults are thought to benefit from health communication through the internet, but many of them avoid internet resources due to lack of technical skills, impairments, or distrust, and prefer health professionals. This paper presents results from a survey and an interview. Questionnaires were in January 2011 distributed to 1,000 Finns aged 65 to 79 years in Southwest Finland, and 281 questionnaires were returned. Of 49 follow-up interviews conducted with the respondents, 19 are included in this study. The results confirm that the internet is of fairly little importance for older Finns seeking health information, and that many older, people with lower levels of education, and people rating their health as poor, do not use it at all. Health and information providers should be cautious to rely on seniors to take care of themselves and their health through internet information, as there is a digital divide between people of varying demographic background.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristina Eriksson-Backa, 2013. "The role of online health information in the lives of Finns aged 65 to 79 years," International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 13(1), pages 5-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijnvor:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:5-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=58438
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijnvor:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:5-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=22 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.