Smart technology and the meaning in life of older adults during the Covid-19 public health emergency period: a cross-cultural qualitative study

Abstract

The exponential increase of the older segment of the population is coinciding with the growing challenges of a digital society in different socio-cultural contexts. This exploratory study aims to analyze older adult perspectives of how smart technology influenced their meaning in life during the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency period, using qualitative research at a cross-national level. Three hundred and fifty-one community-dwelling older participants aged 65-87 years were included in the study. Participants were Italian, Mexican, Portuguese and Spanish. All the narratives went through a process of content analysis. Findings of content analysis produced six themes: Meaningful relations, rewarding activities, spirituality, health and safety-related support, self-growth, and physical activity. Smart technology was important in promoting significant relations for Mexican older adults (71.3%), rewarding activities for Portuguese older adults (57.1%), spirituality for Spanish older participants (71.6%), and physical activity for Italian older adults (29.5%). This study indicated that smart technology during the Health Emergency period was important for the meaning in life of older populations, mostly by facilitating meaningful relations, rewarding activities and spirituality. Future interventions with older adults during pandemic periods should consider the diversity of themes associated with increasing older adult well-being, from a cross-cultural perspective.

Older adults’ experiences of maintaining social participation: Creating opportunities and striving to adapt to changing situations

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The Pandemic Experience: A Corpus of Subjective Reports on Life During the First Wave of COVID-19 in the UK, Japan, and Mexico

“…There is a growing number of cross-cultural investigations of how people were impacted by the pandemic, but they usually focus on specific segments of the population and/or address very specific research questions, and often in terms of quantitative scales rather than in the form of subjective reports [e.g., (9)(10)(11)(12)]. The value of this corpus is that it was open to all adults, and that it was intended to capture people's first-person perspective on how they experienced the pandemic impacting on various essential aspects of their everyday life.…”

International psychological research addressing the early phase of the COVID‐19 pandemic: A rapid scoping review and implications for global psychology

“…Only a few had explicitly included and analysed cross‐cultural measures. For example, a small number of studies conducted cross‐cultural qualitative studies (e.g., von Humboldt et al, 2020) to address research questions linked to universality and diversity across countries. Most of the quantitative and mixed‐methods studies actually compared countries instead of cultures ( n = 58), for example, Kochuvilayil et al (2021) compared Australian and Indian nursing students, suggesting that culture can influence how nursing students experienced and coped during the pandemic; however, culture was not measured.…”