Refined Analysis of Older eHealth Users From an Agency Perspective: Quantitative Telephone Interview Study

BACKGROUND: Most studies on the eHealth divide among older people have compared users to nonusers and found that age, gender, and education were associated with eHealth misuse. They assumed that these characteristics were structural barriers to eHealth adoption. Furthermore, eHealth practices have been examined in a narrow and incomplete way, and the studies disagree about the association between health conditions and eHealth use. Using a more dynamic theoretical lens, we investigated the potential motivations driving older adults’ agential adoption of eHealth practices despite their advanced age. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to obtain a complete and detailed description of eHealth uses among older adults; examine whether demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and education (previously related to eHealth misuse) are still associated with the various eHealth clusters; and determine whether contextual factors such as changes in the health condition of older eHealth users or their loved ones are associated with older adult eHealth use. METHODS: We conducted a 30-minute telephone interview with a representative sample of 442 Israeli adults (aged ≥50 years) with a sampling error of 2.04%. The interviews were conducted in Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian. Using factor analysis with 21 eHealth use questions, we identified 4 eHealth clusters: instrumental and administrative information seeking, information sharing, seeking information from peers, and web-based self-tracking. In addition to age, gender, education, internet experience, frequency of internet use, perceived eHealth literacy, and self-rated health, we asked respondents to indicate how much they had used offline health services because of a health crisis in the past year. RESULTS: We found differences in the number of older eHealth users in the various clusters. They used instrumental and administrative information (420/442, 95%) and obtained information from peers (348/442, 78.7%) the most; followed by web-based self-tracking related to health issues (305/442, 69%), and only a few (52/442, 11.3%) uploaded and shared health information on the web. When controlling for personal attributes, age, gender, and education were no longer predictors of eHealth use, nor was a chronic ailment. Instead, internet experience, frequency of internet use, and perceived eHealth literacy were associated with 3 eHealth clusters. Looking for health information for family and friends predicted all 4 eHealth clusters. CONCLUSIONS: Many older adults can overcome structural barriers such as age, gender, and education. The change in their or their loved ones’ circumstances encouraged them to make deliberate efforts to embrace the new practices expected from today’s patients. Seeking health information for family and friends and dealing with unexpected health crises motivates them to use eHealth. We suggest that health professionals ignore their tendency to label older people as nonusers and encourage them to benefit from using eHealth and overcome stereotypical ways of perceiving these patients.