This study investigated the influences of knowledge, particularly Internet, Web browser, and search engine knowledge, as well as cognitive abilities on older adult information seeking on the Internet. The emphasis on aspects of cognition was informed by a modeling framework of search engine information-seeking behavior. Participants from two older age groups were recruited: twenty people in a younger-old group (ages 60-70) and twenty people in an older-old group (ages 71-85). Ten younger adults (ages 18-39) served as a comparison group. All participants had at least some Internet search experience. The experimental task consisted of six realistic search problems, all involving information related to health and well-being and which varied in degree of complexity. The results indicated that though necessary, Internet-related knowledge was not sufficient in explaining information-seeking performance, and suggested that a combination of both knowledge and key cognitive abilities is important for successful information seeking. In addition, the cognitive abilities that were found to be critical for task performance depended on the search problem's complexity. Also, significant differences in task performance between the younger and the two older age groups were found on complex, but not on simple problems. Overall, the results from this study have implications for instructing older adults on Internet information seeking and for the design of Web sites.

The findings indicate that training, experience, and abilities are important when using complex health websites. However, training alone is not sufficient. The complexity of web content needs to be considered to ensure successful use of these websites by those with lower abilities.

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The aging of the population and, concomitantly, of the workforce has a number of important implications for governments, businesses, and workers. In this article, we examine the prospects for the employability of older workers as home-based teleworkers. This alternative work could accommodate many of the needs and preferences of older workers and at the same time benefit organizations. However, before telework can be considered a viable work option for many older workers there are a number of issues to consider, including the ability of older workers to adapt to the technological demands that are typically associated with telework jobs and managerial attitudes about older workers and about telework. Through an integrated examination of these and other issues, our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges associated with employing older workers as teleworkers. We also present findings from a questionnaire study that assessed managers' perceptions of worker attributes desirable for telework and how older workers compare to younger workers on these attributes. The sample included 314 managers with varying degrees of managerial experience from a large variety of companies in the United States. The results presented a mixed picture with respect to the employability of older workers as teleworkers, and strongly suggested that less experienced managers would be more resistant to hiring older people as teleworkers. We conclude with a number of recommendations for improving the prospects for employment of older workers for this type of work arrangement. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Telecommuting work represents a strategy for managing the growing number of older people in the workforce. This study involved a simulated customer service telecommuting task that used e-mail to answer customer queries about media-related products and company policies. Participants included 27 "younger" older adults (50-65 years) and 25 "older" older adults (66-80 years). The participants performed the task for two 2-hr sessions a day over 4 consecutive days. Although both age groups showed significant improvement across sessions on many of the performance criteria, in general the improvements were more marked for the older age-group participants. However, the participants from both age groups had difficulty meeting some of the task performance requirements. These results are discussed in terms of training strategies for older workers.