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Older Adults’ Experiences of Autonomy During COVID-19 Pandemic

Published: 08 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

A sense of autonomy is important to ensure a good quality of life for older adults. However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic challenged older adults’ autonomy. The government has imposed rules and regulations to slow down the spread of the virus that reduced older adults’ abilities to go outside. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 older adults living alone in community-dwellings to understand the influence of the pandemic on their experiences of autonomy. Our findings show that even though older adults experienced limited autonomy due to extrinsic (e.g., government regulation, influence of others) and intrinsic (e.g., risk perception) factors, they experienced new opportunities for autonomy through engagement in various self-chosen activities at home. The insights from the study pave ways for future research and design of aging in place technology focusing on providing a sense of autonomy.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Leveraging Chatbots to Combat Health Misinformation for Older Adults: Participatory Design StudyJMIR Formative Research10.2196/607128(e60712)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2024
  • (2023)Managers’ and Administrators’ Perspectives on Digital Technology Use in Regional Long-Term Care Homes During the COVID-19 PandemicGerontology and Geriatric Medicine10.1177/233372142211466659Online publication date: 10-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Older Adults Using Technology for Meaningful Activities During COVID-19: An Analysis Through the Lens of Self-Determination TheoryProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580839(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2021
2965 pages
ISBN:9781450380959
DOI:10.1145/3411763
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 08 May 2021

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Author Tags

  1. autonomy
  2. older adults
  3. pandemic

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  • Poster
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

  • Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement
  • National Science Foundation
  • Indiana University Grand Challenge Precision Health Initiative

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CHI '21
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Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Leveraging Chatbots to Combat Health Misinformation for Older Adults: Participatory Design StudyJMIR Formative Research10.2196/607128(e60712)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2024
  • (2023)Managers’ and Administrators’ Perspectives on Digital Technology Use in Regional Long-Term Care Homes During the COVID-19 PandemicGerontology and Geriatric Medicine10.1177/233372142211466659Online publication date: 10-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Older Adults Using Technology for Meaningful Activities During COVID-19: An Analysis Through the Lens of Self-Determination TheoryProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580839(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Infectious Diseases and Healthy Ageing: Making the Case for a 15-Minute CitySustainable Neighbourhoods for Ageing in Place10.1007/978-3-031-41594-4_10(179-195)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2023
  • (2022)BibliographieLe Journal des psychologues10.3917/jdp.400.0049n° 400:8(49-51)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2022
  • (2022)Older Adults’ Experiences Moving Community Online in Independent Living During the Covid-19 PandemicGerontology and Geriatric Medicine10.1177/233372142211248938Online publication date: 20-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Understanding Older Adults' Participation in Online Social ActivitiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35648556:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022

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