| With the development of information technology,smartphones have become closely integrated with people’s daily lives,and the elderly are also actively or passively exposed to digital media.However,they often encounter difficulties in using technology,obtain less convenience,and even become obstacles.The COVID-19 pandemic has brought this phenomenon to the forefront of society and aroused widespread attention to the problem of the "digital divide" for the elderly.In this research,first of all,relevant literature on the barriers,influencing factors,age-appropriate design,community and family intervention and other related research on the elderly’s smartphone usage were reviewed and analyzed.Our literature analysis found that current research on barriers to smartphones usage by the elderly tends to focus on the superficial barriers caused by visual and tactile decline during the use of intelligent applications by the elderly.Currently,there is a lack of effective measurement tools for a comprehensive and systematic evaluation of barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly.At the same time,although it is generally believed that cognitive decline caused by aging is the main influencing factor,there is currently a lack of empirical research directly correlating the cognitive decline of the elderly to smartphones’ usage barriers.Based on the above analysis,this study has two levels:Firstly,it focuses on exploring the development of subjective(questionnaire evaluation)measurement tools for barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly,through exploring the dimensional characteristics of the elderly’s technological usage barriers(i.e.,"what" is the current situation),to evaluate the subjective usage of smartphones by the elderly.Secondly,combined with elderly cognitive evaluation data,this study further aims to reveal the association mechanism between the cognitive level of the elderly and barriers to smartphone usage,and then further explore the impact effects of individual characteristics,technology,and environmental factors on barriers to smartphone usage from empirical data.By exploring the influencing factors,this research provides a reference for designing intervention programs aimed at reducing the digital divide for the elderly.Therefore,in Study 1,based on literature review,expert discussions,and semi-structured interview results,an initial version of the "Questionnaire on Barriers to Smartphone Usage by the Elderly" was constructed and administered in a pre-survey.The questionnaire was initially distributed to 162 people.Secondly,the data was analyzed and exploratory analysis was carried out based on the remaining questions that met the standard,and the official questionnaire was re-administered.And a total of 240 questionnaires were distributed Finally,the collected data was analyzed and sorted to determine the final version of the questionnaire.The results of Study 1 showed that all indicators of the "Questionnaire on Barriers to Smartphone usage by the Elderly" met statistical standards,and the questionnaire analysis obtained three dimensions of barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly: lack of exploration awareness,operational difficulties,and incomplete mental models.Moreover,based on demographic variables,the subjective evaluation of barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly differed significantly according to age,educational level,income level,and duration of use.Study 2 relied on the subjective(questionnaire evaluation)evaluation of the elderly’s barriers to smartphone usage obtained from Study 1,as well as combined with the experiment method based on objective task operations,objective indicators of smartphone use barriers among 22 elderly people were measured.Based on the collected data of subjective and objective indicators,this study analyzed the influencing factors of elderly barriers to smartphone usage.Firstly,we used the Montreal Cognitive Assessment(Mo CA)and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test(SDMT)tool to obtain objective data on the cognitive level of the elderly.We selected a conventional mobile We Chat operation task as the objective indicator of the barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly(completion time,total click times,and error click times).Secondly,based on the two interface elements that elderly users find difficult to recognize in Study 1(interface complexity and function metaphor),and the cognitive level,we conducted a 2*2*2three-factor mixed design experiment to explore the independent effects of each factor and the interaction effects between factors.Lastly,we collected data on individual characteristics,technological aspects,and environmental aspects using subjective questioning evaluations and questionnaires.The results showed that there were significant differences in both subjective barrier evaluation and objective task operation among the elderly with different cognitive levels.Moreover,the functional metaphor had a main effect and interacted with interface complexity.The stepwise regression analysis results showed that Mo CA and digital literacy in individual characteristics,and the overall technological perception in the technical aspect,all had a significant negative predictive effect on the barriers to smartphone usage by the elderly. |
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