JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As a result of demographic changes, the number of people aged 60 years and older has been increasing steadily. Therefore, older adults have become more important as a target group for health communication efforts. Various studies show that online health information sources have gained importance among younger adults, but we know little about the health-related Internet use of senior citizens in general, and in particular about the variables explaining their online health-related information seeking behavior. Media use studies indicate that in addition to sociodemographic variables, lifestyle factors might play a role in this context.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to examine older people’s health-related Internet use. Our study focuses on the explanatory potential of lifestyle types over and above sociodemographic variables to predict older adults’ Internet use for health information.

Methods:

A telephone survey was conducted with a random sample of German adults aged 60 years and older (N = 701), that were quota-allocated by gender, age, educational status, and degree of urbanity of their place of residence.

Results:

The results revealed that participants used the Internet infrequently (M = 1.82, SD = 1.07), while medical personnel (M = 2.89, SD = 1.11), family and friends (M = 2.86, SD = 1.21), and health brochures (M = 2.85, SD = 1.21) were their main sources of health information. A hierarchical cluster analysis based on values, interests, and leisure time activities revealed three different lifestyle types for adults aged over 60: The Sociable Adventurer, The Religious Culturally Interested, and The Uninterested Inactive. After adding these types as second-step-predictors in a hierarchical regression model with sociodemographic variables (step 1), the explained variance increased significantly (delta R2 = .01, P = .03), indicating that The Religious Culturally Interested and The Sociable Adventurer use the Internet more often for health information than The Uninterested Inactive, over and above their sociodemographic attributes.

Conclusions:

Our findings indicate, that the Internet still plays only a minor role in the health information seeking behavior of older German adults. Nevertheless, there are subgroups that may be reached with online health information; this subgroup includes younger, more active and culturally interested males. Our findings suggest that lifestyle types should be taken into account when explaining health-related Internet use behavior.