Older Women and the Internet

ABSTRACT

This study was designed to explore the effects that training had on older adults' willingness to use the Internet to manage their health care. The most interesting result was that out of 70 self-volunteers, 58 were women. Results show that highly educated women who either own a computer or have access to one, and have low levels of anxiety toward computers, with strong feelings of self-efficacy toward computers and the Internet, and an internal locus of control, are more willing than men to use the Internet to find medical information to manage a chronic health problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Older women
• Internet
• medical information
• participation
• health care