Analyzing Information Needs of Elderly People: A Survey in Chinese Rural Community

Abstract

A survey about the information needs of elderly people could find out the information required to address the needs of the aged in a community. Analyzing data collected from 600 elderly people through field investigation with a questionnaire in a rural community in central China, the results show that the preferred information format of the majority of aged people is audio and/or visual information product, especially audio product. Most of the aged people stated that they were in need of healthy and medical non-educational audio information products. The survey maybe lead to improved and expanded information services for respondents who are short of such services, including Public broadcasting services, extending the audiovisual collection, loaning audiovisuals, religious faith audiovisuals and others providing needed information to them. In summary, this paper assembles views on what the elderly people currently need to be helped by both practitioners and researchers in the elderly people services domain.

Share and Cite:

Zou, C. and Zhou, P. (2014) Analyzing Information Needs of Elderly People: A Survey in Chinese Rural Community. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2, 109-115. doi: 10.4236/jss.2014.29019.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] Zuo, M.Y., Liu, Q.Q. and Liu F. (2009) Study on the Model of the Elderly’s Information Needs: Design and Application. Management Review, 21, 71-77.
[2] Jiang, L.H. and Huang, J.C. (2011) The Demand of the Aged and Livable Community Construction. Journal of east China University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 6, 87-93.
[3] Zhu, X.J. (2012) Aging Society and the Construction of Livable Communities. Social work, 3, 1672- 4828.
[4] Rodriguez, T., Fischer, K. and Kingston, J. (2005) Intelligent Services for the Elderly over the TV. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 25, 159-180. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10844-005-0187-x
[5] Murray, J.L. (1989) Health Maintenance: Care of the Ageing Patient. Primary Care, 16, 289-303.
[6] Abdulraheem, I.S. (2005) An Opinion Survey of Caregivers Concerning Caring for the Elderly in Ilorin Metropolis, Nigeria. Public Health, 119, 1138-1144. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2005.04.005
[7] Duner, A. and Nordstrom, M. (2005) Intentions and Strategies among Elderly People: Coping in Everyday Life. Journal of Aging Studies, 19, 437-451. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2004.10.001
[8] Zhang, Z.C. and Cai, J.X. (2013) The Highlights, Difficulties and Countermeasures on the Implementation of the New Urbanization Strategy in Henan Province. Economic Geography, 33, 53-58.
[9] Kinsella, K. and Velkoff, V.A. (2001) U.S. Census Bureau, Series P95/01-1, An Aging World, 2001. Government Printing Office, Washington DC.
[10] Jian, B.Y., Dong, H.K. and Jian, L,Q. (2011) Study of New Con-struction of rural Community Organizations under Point of View Combined Urban and Rural Village. Journal of Gansu Lianhe University (Natural Sciences), 25, 74-76.
[11] Mao, X.O. (2005) Goal-Directed User Study and Design of IT Product for Elders. Dalian Maritime University, Dalian.
[12] Yuan, X.-L., Jia, J.-Z. and Zhu D. (2009) Investigation and Study of Shanxi Province Peasants Information Demand. Information Science, 27, 1194-1198.
[13] Theodorakopoulos, N., Preciado, D.J.S. and Bennett, D. (2012) Transferring Technology from University to Rural Industry within a Developing Economy Context: The Case for Nurturing Communities of Practice. Technovation, 32, 550-559. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2012.05.001
[14] Liu, M., Deng, Y.C., He, J. and Liu, Y. (2011) Present Situations of Information Demands of Hunan Rural Area and Its Countermeasure. Library Journal, 30, 44-49.

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.