Information literacy, well-being, and rural older adults in a pandemic

Many older adults residing in rural communities faced particularly damaging consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Given the impact of the pandemic on the ability to rely on traditional forms of information (i.e. interpersonal communication), reliance on digital technology and other non-traditional sources of information grew. Those who lacked the information literacy, defined in this study as the ability to find and evaluate the reliability of information to address an information need, may have faced psychologically damaging consequences caused by the proliferation of misinformation and information poverty. Informed by an ecological understanding of human information behavior, this paper reports on the findings of a study of rural older adults’ information literacy skills and sense of well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. A mail survey, based on concepts from psychology and information science and question wordings adapted from the 2021 Health and Retirement Survey and Jones-Jang et al.’s study of literacies and fake news, was distributed in the summer of 2021 to older adults living in rural Kansas. About 206 valid responses to the survey were received. These were analyzed using correlation and regression testing. The findings indicate a significant relationship between information literacy skills and one’s overall sense of well-being. Personal (age, gender, health, life control), economic (employment, finances), and social-relational resources (social engagement, relationship quality) all were shown to relate positively to information literacy skills. These findings provide definition to our understanding of the importance of information literacy in modern understandings of psychological well-being.