A Study on Relationship among Health Status and Media Literacy among Elderly in Surin Province

Among this world of communications technology, medial literacy emerges as a necessity for effective filtering of the vast of information we consume. The aims of this descriptive study were to determine health status and media literacy and a relationship between health status and media literacy among elderly in Bakdi Subdistrict, Muang Surin. Sample were purposive samplings from elderly age more than 60 years old who living in Bakdi Subdistrict, Muang Surin which were simple random from lists of subdistrict of Surin province. There were 204 elderly with years of age were 61-80 (M = 68.28, SD. = 4.93) completed structured questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were utilized to describe the findings. The findings were as followed. Majority of samplings were female (60.8%), never attended school (83.8%), married (50.5%), stay with descendants (58.3%), they have income from premium of elderly only (89.7%), their descendants were caregivers (70.6%), and have chronic disease such as hypertension or diabetes mellitus (71.6%). However, elderly with disease rated their status not statistically difference than elderly without chronic disease (M = 7.36, SD. = .48; M = 7.40, SD. = .49, p=.64 respectively). All of them never used social media such as email, line, facebook, etc. There was only 16.7% ever computers at Elderly club for entertainments. Moreover, it was very little number of elderly who search for information about treatment, health care providers, and peer health group (2.9%, 4.9%, and 4.9%, respectively). They also rated media literacy at low score. They also have very low self-efficacy score on media literacy. They stated that they chose health care providers first if they want to have more health information. There was no statically significant relationship among health status and media literacy. The suggestions from this study are that any activities lunched in Elderly club should be integrated the promoting of media literacy. However, how to promote media literacy who never attends school is very challenging job for health care providers. Therefore, research and development for develop program enhancing media literacy among elderly should be conducted.