The Older Population Survey

According to the overall analytical model developed for the purposes of SeniorWatch, empirical information gathered included:

• Current usage of IST products/services including, e.g.
• • IT devices in the household
  • telecommunications access (fixed/mobile telephone, PSTN/ISDN, Cable)
  • PC usage/Internet access
  • activities PC/Internet is used for
• Potential and actual demand including, e.g.
• interest referring to online-activities (e.g. purchasing things, interact with local authorities)
• interest/knowledge referring to general purpose IST
• IST-related needs (e.g. inferred from health status, impairments,
• problems/inability to use certain media/devices and so on)
• likelihood of IST usage (e.g. plans to purchase)
• Mediating factors including, e.g.
• Preferences (e.g. for doing things on-line versus face-to-face)
• economic resources (e.g. income, self-assessment)
• social resources (e.g. social network, availability of support)
• cognitive resources (e.g. experience with IT in private/occupational context, self assessment of skills, etc.)
• psychological resources (e.g. IST relevance for seniors, level of information on IST, perceived hindrances)
• socio-demography (e.g. sex, age, marital status, occupational status, age of retirement, educational attainment)

OPS Sampling approach

The population surveyed were people aged 50 years and older living in private households in the 15 Member States of the European Union. The restriction to telephone households as a sufficient sampling approximation was chosen as it is is widely accepted in social sciences due to the proliferation of telephone access throughout most of Europe and the refined techniques of randomisation in recent years. Thus, with the exceptions of Portugal and Ireland (where face to face interviews were carried out on recommendation of the respective survey institutes) computer aided telephone interviews (CATI) were carried out using state of the art random sampling procedures. The sample represented the European population aged 50 years and older living in private households according to age, sex and geographic distribution. Overall, the net sample comprised almost 10 000 respondents across Europe (1000 for Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and the UK; 500 for Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Finland, and Sweden, and 100 in Luxembourg).