Older audiences in the digital media environment: A cross-national longitudinal study Wave 1 Report 1.0

Involving teams from seven countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Netherlands, Romania, and Spain) this Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) project offers a unique opportunity to explore possible processes of displacement of traditional dominant media by innovative communication practices within the older audience of new media. Replicating Nimrod’s (2017) study of older audiences, data will be collected on a biannual basis over a five-year period (overall three waves).
The first wave was based on surveys with Internet users aged 60 and up, to whom we will return in the following waves. Data was collected by local commercial firms. With the exception of Romania, where the survey was conducted via telephone due to a low rate of Internet users among the older population, all firms applied an online survey. Most data was collected between November and December 2016, with the exception of Canada, where the data were collected between June and July 2017.
With varying expected dropout rates, the samples were planned to have a final panel that will comprise about 500 participants per country. For this reason, sample sizes in the first wave were not equal and ranged between 715 (Denmark) and 3,538 (Canada). The overall sample size consisted of 10,527 Internet users aged 60 and over. To reach this sample size, the firms contacted a total of 33,035 individuals. Response rates ranged between 8.9% and 64.6% according to percentage of older people who use the Internet in the country and data collection method. The response rate was at its lowest in Romania, where there was a need to screen out older adults who do not use the Internet, and at its highest in the Netherlands.