University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Vehalen over technologie: een kwalitatief onderzoek over de verschillen tussen ouderen in gebruik, beleving en invloed van gezondheidstechnologieën in de loop van het leven

Schulz, C. (2011) Vehalen over technologie: een kwalitatief onderzoek over de verschillen tussen ouderen in gebruik, beleving en invloed van gezondheidstechnologieën in de loop van het leven.

[img] PDF
317kB
Abstract:Nowadays, technology is taken for granted and is very much integrated in our lives. One branch of technology that gains more and more importance can be found in the healthcare sector. Mainly elderly from age 65 upward who are affected by a decrease in health can benefit from the diagnostic and treatment possibilities that are offered by this type of technology. Some studies that were already done on this topic explored the acceptance and integration of modern designs like telemedicine or e-health. In these studies a relatively high acceptance of supportive technology was discovered and experience with the use of this kind of technology was found. The literature that is available on this topic gives no information on how elderly experienced or integrated other medical technological equipment like X-ray, CT or blood pressure meter throughout their lives. The goal of this qualitative study is to find out about the differences between elderly on use, experience and influence of different types of medical technology. Life story interviews were chosen to be the qualitative method of this study to find out about the different aspects of experience and integration. Therefore 30 elderly between 64 and 82 year of age were interviewed on their life story. Because of the many changes during the lives of the elderly on that topic, this group was picked to be the target group. The questions of the interview were directed to the past, the present and the future to come to know about the differences between these periods of life. The interview asked about three different types of technology: (1) medical technology in hospitals, (2) health equipment for personal or individual use at home and (3) means of communication in combination with health. Elderly were further asked to talk about the experienced differences between the situation 50 to 60 years ago and the present with the connected evaluation. It was tried to find highs and lows on the lives of the elderly that are connected to medical technological development. The most important findings of this study are that experience and use of technology differ per person and per device and that they depent on different factors such as age, healthstatus, earlier experiences, acceptance or personality. In general it seems that elderly have a positive attitude towards technology that is used in hospitals. They are used more frequently and are mostly more important than other types of technology. Furthermore they seem to have the biggest influence on the lives of elderly. A generally neutral experience and opinion was to be found for equipment that was used at home. A bigger diversity in experience was to be found for the use of communicationtechnology. Furthermore it seems to be that the older people get the more they make use of medical technology.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/61251
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page