How Prefrail Older People Living Alone Perceive Information and Communications Technology and What They Would Ask a Robot for: Qualitative Study (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND In the last decade, the family system has changed significantly. Although in the past, older people used to live with their children, nowadays, they cannot always depend on assistance of their relatives. Many older people wish to remain as independent as possible while remaining in their homes, even when living alone. To do so, there are many tasks that they must perform to maintain their independence in everyday life, and above all, their well-being. Information and communications technology (ICT), particularly robotics and domotics, could play a pivotal role in aging, especially in contemporary society, where relatives are not always able to accurately and constantly assist the older person. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to understand the needs, preferences, and views on ICT of some prefrail older people who live alone. In particular, we wanted to explore their attitude toward a hypothetical caregiver robot and the functions they would ask for. METHODS We designed a qualitative study based on an interpretative phenomenological approach. A total of 50 potential participants were purposively recruited in a big town in Northern Italy and were administered the Fried scale (to assess the participants’ frailty) and the Mini-Mental State Examination (to evaluate the older person’s capacity to comprehend the interview questions). In total, 25 prefrail older people who lived alone participated in an individual semistructured interview, lasting approximately 45 min each. Overall, 3 researchers independently analyzed the interviews transcripts, identifying meaning units, which were later grouped in clustering of themes, and finally in emergent themes. Constant triangulation among researchers and their reflective attitude assured trustiness. RESULTS From this study, it emerged that a number of interviewees who were currently using ICT (ie, smartphones) did not own a computer in the past, or did not receive higher education, or were not all young older people (aged 65-74 years). Furthermore, we found that among the older people who described their relationship with ICT as negative, many used it in everyday life. Referring to robotics, the interviewees appeared quite open-minded. In particular, robots were considered suitable for housekeeping, for monitoring older people’s health and accidental falls, and for entertainment. CONCLUSIONS Older people’s use and attitudes toward ICT does not always seem to be related to previous experiences with technological devices, higher education, or lower age. Furthermore, many participants in this study were able to use ICT, even if they did not always acknowledge it. Moreover, many interviewees appeared to be open-minded toward technological devices, even toward robots. Therefore, proposing new advanced technology to a group of prefrail people, who are self-sufficient and can live alone at home, seems to be feasible.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".