Activity Engagement and Everyday Technology Use Among Older Adults in an Urban Area

Abstract

Increasing the accessibility of available and relevant everyday technologies among older adults in an urban area may increase AE.

Everyday Technology Use and Overall Needed Assistance to Function in the Home and Community Among Urban Older Adults

“…We applied this quality control step because this was the first ETUQ administration in the United States. Only one participant's measure did not meet our criteria, so we interpreted this as evidence of the ETUQ's validity in the United States and included all persons' measures in analyses, as described in Walsh et al (2018). We used Winsteps ® (Version 3.93.0; Linacre, 2017) to complete the transformation.…”

“…See Table 1 for demographics and measure distributions. We adapted this table from Walsh et al (2018).…”

“…In addition, sociodemographic factors may impact how older adults utilize their capacities to engage with everyday technologies and environments (Kottorp et al, 2016), and sociodemographic factors may influence how communitydwelling older adults use technology to meet person-environment demands (Peek et al, 2017;Satariano, Scharlach, & Lindeman, 2014;Walsh et al, 2018). Because overlaps in access to and difficulty in everyday technology use exist among older adults, diagnoses and sociodemographic factors alone may not predict barriers to everyday technology use and, thus, increased overall needed assistance (Gaber et al, 2019;Kottorp et al, 2016).…”

“…Assessments such as the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (ETUQ) may complement screens such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al, 2005) among community-dwelling older adults at risk for declines in everyday technology use and cognitive status that are associated with reduced social, leisure, and IADL performance. Walsh et al (2018) and Gaber et al (2019) recently used the MoCA as a guide rather than a diagnostic tool to study groups of older adult everyday technology users with and without cognitive impairments. Ryd, Nygård, Malinowsky, Öhman, and Kottorp (2017) also demonstrated the ETUQ's ability to distinguish overall needed assistance as defined by the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS; A. Fisher & Jones, 2012) among older adults with and without cognitive impairments.…”

“…Better understanding associations among everyday technology use, cognitive status, sociodemographic factors, and overall needed assistance may inform clinical approaches to increasing independence, well-being, and participation (Levine et al, 2018;Ryd et al, 2017;Walsh et al, 2018). Our purpose, therefore, is to investigate whether assessing everyday technology use enhances predictions of communitydwelling urban older adults' overall needed assistance.…”