International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

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 Volume 9, Issue 4 (April 2022), Pages: 71-79

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 Original Research Paper

 Title: The relationship between digital literacy, loneliness, quality of life, and health-promoting behaviors among the elderly in the age of COVID-19

 Author(s): Sun Hee Jang, Nam Joo Je *

 Affiliation(s):

 Department of Nursing, Changshin University, Changwon, South Korea

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 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0764-0428

 Digital Object Identifier: 

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2022.04.009

 Abstract:

Social distancing and the expansion of the digital environment due to the impact of COVID-19 are raising the need for digital literacy among the elderly for overall social participation such as mutual communication, health care, and education. The purpose of this study was to identify the correlation between digital literacy, loneliness, quality of life, and health promotion behaviors among the elderly aged between 65 and over and under 75 years. The data collection for this study was from May 1 to June 1, 2021, after approval from the C University Bioethics Review Committee using online questionnaires for 159 young-old elderly living in Korea. This study was a descriptive correlation study to understand the relationship between these variables for the young-old elderly. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS WIN/25.0. The general characteristics were frequency, mean, and standard deviation, the difference of variables according to the general characteristics was analyzed by t-test and one-way ANOVA, and post-analysis was analyzed by Scheffe's test. The correlation between each variable was analyzed using Pearson's correlation. The subjects' digital media literacy was positively correlated with quality of life and health promotion behavior. Loneliness was inversely correlated with quality of life and health-promoting behavior. Quality of life was positively correlated with health-promoting behavior. Based on the results of this study, it is suggested that digital literacy education programs for the elderly in the future are necessary to reduce the elderly's feeling of loneliness and improve the quality of life and health promotion behaviors. 

 © 2022 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords: Digital literacy, Elderly, Health promotion, Loneliness, Quality of life

 Article History: Received 16 December 2021, Received in revised form 9 February 2022, Accepted 9 February 2022

 Acknowledgment 

This work was supported by the Changshin University Research Fund of 2021(Changshin-2021-045).

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Jang SH and Je NJ (2022). The relationship between digital literacy, loneliness, quality of life, and health-promoting behaviors among the elderly in the age of COVID-19. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 9(4): 71-79

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