[Book Review:] Morrel, Roger W. (Ed.): Older adults, health information, and the World Wide Web, Mahwah, New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, 2002 [original]

nding new and meaningful goals might contribute to a

deeper understanding of goal striving and positive develop-

ment. Indeed, some researchers working in the area of life

goals, not part of this publication, have already started

addressing issues involved in adaptive goal reprioritisation

(e.g., Brandtsta¨ dter; Carver & Scheier; Heckhausen &

Schulz).

In sum, although preliminary in some ways, Life goals and

well-being provides relevant insights into the adaptive value of

people’s goal orientations. It is an international publication and

covers a lot of ground. It contributes to the growing body of

literature in the area of life goals and points to some promising

new avenues for future research.

Carsten Wrosch

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Carsten Wrosch is Assistant Professor in the Psychology Depart-

ment and the Centre for Research in Human Development at

Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research

concerns adaptive self-regulation of personal goals and successful

development across the human life course.

Morrell, Roger W. (Ed.) (2002). Older adults, health

information, and the World Wide Web. Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. ISBN 0805838 414.

208pp. $49.95 (hbk)

This 14-chapter book is based on talks at the same-named rst

national conference (which explains a part of the kaleidoscopic

nature of the volume) held 1999 in Bethesda, Maryland, and

hosted by the SPRY Foundation. The title already conveys the

book’s aims: reporting on the target group (older adults), the

content (health information), and the medium (the World

Wide Web, WWW).

Conceptually, the book is divided into four sections. The

rst section provides an overview of elders’ WWW usage. The

rst two chapters come closest to the theme of the book title:

Wetle elucidates the need for accessible and quality health

information for senior citizens (Chapter 1). It describes how

the National Institute on Aging (NIA) zooms in on the topic

and supports it, with its emphases on elderly individuals’

computer learning for extending employability, reducing social

isolation, providing health information, modifying health

behaviours, and conducting consumer activities. This is

illustrated by several of NIA’s initiatives. Lindberg outlines

the projects of the National Library of Medicine for health

information access (Chapter 2). Morrell, Mayhorn, and

Bennett provide an in-depth view on older adults’ WWW

usage, including short discussions on the potentials and privacy

concerns of technology, the digital divide (‘‘the socioeconomic

and demographic division that exists between individuals who

use computers and those who do not’’, p. 51), and

miscellaneous barriers to PC use and Internet access (Chapter

4). McConatha, in Chapter 3, contributes in a way quite

different to other writings in the book: in a rst strand he

discusses models of and evidence about personal control, social

isolation and support, well-being, person-environment t,

technology, and life-long learning theories. As a second strand,

distance learning modalities and open learning systems are

scrutinised. In a synthesis of these building blocks, McConatha

offers a new ‘‘E-quality theory’’ and ways to evaluate it. The

theory basically states that successful ageing can be promoted

by incorporating e-learning; the potentials of technology

transcend age-related boundaries on control, social support,

and the like.

The second—and most homogeneous —section of the book

focuses on age-specic web design issues. Echt presents a

review of empirical evidence meant to aid the construction of

screen-based visual presentations, followed by concrete guide-

lines to achieve age-adequacy on the web (Chapter 5).

Whereas Echt’s chapter focuses on vision, Mead, Lamson,

and Rogers employ a human-factors approach in Chapter 6.

Their user-centred design procedures involve organisational goal

setting with the assessment of user proles (regarding age, they

mainly discuss cognition, perception, and movement control)

and user tasks, prototype construction, evaluation, and nal re-

design(s). Mead et al. also offer a number of useful web design

principles. Holt and Morrell concentrate on the cognitive

aspects of WWW usage in Chapter 7. All three chapters of this

section have been thoroughly researched. They make up a

useful threesome for website construction at both the novice

and the advanced web-builder level.

This practical section with empirically well-grounded

advice for web design is followed by a third section on

current real-life examples of Internet usage by older adults.

Lansdale describes the Northern Californian Linking Ages

programme, with its aims and theoretical underpinnings

(Chapter 8). Participants were from different subgroups on

the continuum of help: assisted living facility residents, a

continuing care community (with both assisted and inde-

pendent living, and a health care unit), and older adults

living independently. The device used in all instances was

a set-top box hooked up with a TV set. Training for both

e-mail use and web navigation was conducted either by

volunteers or in a train-the-trainer format. The chapter adds

value by interspersed brief narratives from the programme

participants and descriptions of past events, which are

illustrative and enliven both the chapter and the section.

An observation that deserves further exploration is conveyed

in the statement that the ‘‘... benet of the Linking Ages

program is not only for those who become effective adopters

and hands-on users of the technology, ...’’ (p. 143), but also

for those with whom the social/communicational experience

could be shared. The short Chapter 9 by Wooten, on the

website of the American Association of Retired People

(AARP), explains the decision-making process of what is

being considered for WWW publication and how the quality

assurance measures work, in line with AARP’s policies. Even

shorter, Chapter 10 by Benjamin on the Environmental

Alliance for Senior Involvement offers a rough overview of

its website and, especially, how senior volunteer opportu-

nities are provided. The next chapter on service access

features proles of six Internet ventures by the Community

Service & Outreach Unit of the West Virginia University

Center on Aging. Holt also introduces a helpful categorisa-

tion scheme for long-term-care websites in Chapter 11. Hsu

and Deering describe healthnder.gov and ways of website

evaluation in Chapter 12. The precise procedures of

evaluation become quite transparent because they depict

the healthnder.gov evaluation process by four modalities

(focus groups, think-aloud interviews, an expert review, and

bounceback forms). Hsu and Deering conclude with a

number of data-driven recommendations for website design,

derived from these ndings. Finally, Baum and Yoder

478 BOOK REVIEWS

present ‘‘Senior Support OnLine’’ (Chapter 13). This

venture started as an attempt ‘‘to establish a network of

‘‘virtual long-term care’’ to serve the needs of the frail

elderly . . .’’ (p. 189). To provide support and services such

as transportation, health care access, or entertainment to

frail-but-independently-living elderly, three advisory groups

were formed (professionals, seniors, web designers). After

hardware testing, a web TV device similar to the one used in

the LinkAges programme was selected as most appropriate;

some participants were also equipped with videoconferencing

capabilities. Hard data are not yet available, but the rst

lessons learned coincide with observations made in other

projects that started from scratch and involved modern

communication technology with inexperienced elderly, parti-

cularly the high degree of labour intensiveness.

The book concludes with a single-chapter fourth section,

authored by R.E. Morgan, Jr., the president of the SPRY

Foundation (Chapter 14). Subtitled a ‘‘conference retro-

spective’’, the chapter provides essential information about

the conference on which the book is based.

The title Older adults, health information, and the World Wide

Web seems to be somewhat of a misnomer: (1) Health

information, health information access, and the control of

health information quality are not as much a focus of the book

as one would anticipate from its cover; rather, the problems

and potentials for older adults that are discussed pertain to the

Internet itself, to its contents, and its accessibility. (2) It is not

just the web that is being examined—various chapters,

particularly noticeable in the third section, involve other

communication technologies, particularly e-mail, as well as

some usenet newsgroup or videoconferencing use. Written at a

time when WWW is highly fashionable and the term ‘‘World

Wide Web’’ is used synonymously with ‘‘Internet’’, it is

sometimes hard to discern the differences.

Humans are biopsychosocial beings. This statement applies

to computer-human interactions just as much as to human-

human interactions. Some of the biological and psychological

issues have been discussed, but the very helpful guidelines on

age-appropriate design are overshadowed by some thorough

and well-meant scholarship that cannot fully evade the

impression of focusing on mechanistic search-and-read phe-

nomena in web usage, spreading out in an inductive fashion—

and hence setting its own boundaries that compromise the

realities of a multi-complex world. And where is the social side

of things . . .? There is a schism between the basic-to-applied

applications in the area of web design in section 2, and the

current usage of modern information and communication

technologies that also involve a strong social component.

How long will it take until the book becomes obsolete?After

all, why would chapter authors even mention the rapid pace of

technological developments that drastically change the picture

of what is presented today?In this regard, there seem to be few

problems regarding the usefulness of the book into the mid-

ranged future. Even if all the technology-based examples

should become outdated, there still exists a critical mass of

evidence derived from year- and decade-long basic research

that will not disappear quickly.

Despite the heterogeneity of the different contributions,

given its breadth of coverage, one does not get the impression

of overly high fragmentation. Additionally, predictions are that

this will not be a book that people peruse, but rather that

readers will skim and select those chapters that t their needs

and interests best. For instance, the information an engineer

might nd useful is probably very different from the afnities of

a cognitive psychologist. Overall, the book is not a ‘‘must-

read’’, but a strong ‘‘should-look-into’’ for everyone interested

in the topic of elders and their Internet usage. It will also be

useful reading for web designers at any skill level, and for

practitioners in all ageing-related disciplines that intersect with

technology.

Sunkyo Kwon

Technical University Berlin, Germany

BOOK REVIEWS 479

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