JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Older people’s use of the Internet is increasingly coming in focus with the demographic changes with a growing older population. Research reports several benefits of older people’s Internet use and highlights problems as various forms of inequality in use within the group. There is a need for consistent measurements to follow the development and use of the Internet in this group and to be able to compare between groups both within and between countries, as well as follow the changes over time.

Objective:

To create an instrument to measure an older person’s perception of the benefits of their online social participation, unconnected to specific applications and services. The instrument to measure internet social participation proposed in this paper builds on social participation factors and is a multidimensional construct incorporating both social relations and societal connectedness

Methods:

A short instrument for measuring social participation over the Internet was created. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted in a random selection of persons aged 65 or older (N=193) on ten initial items. Further validation was made by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the remaining group (N=193).

Results:

A one-factor solution for the social internet score was decided upon after the EFA (based on a random sample of half the data set). None of the questionnaire items were excluded based on the EFA as they all had high loadings, the lowest being 0.61. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.92. The one-factor solution explained 55% of the variance. CFA was performed, including all ten questionnaire items in a one-factor solution. Indices of goodness of fit of the model showed room for improvement. Removal of four questions in a stepwise procedure landed in a six-item model. (χ2(6)=13,985, χ2/df=1,554, comparative fit index=0.992, root mean square error of approximation=0.054, standardized root mean square residual=0.025).

Conclusions:

The proposed instrument can be used to measure digital social participation and coherence with society. The factor analysis is based on a sufficient sample of the general population of older adults in Sweden, and overall the instrument performed as expected.