Research

Research within the TAO project has been carried out by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from various fields of expertise, such as sociology, psychology, gerontology, health, management, new media, e-learning, and requirements engineering.

In addition to action research that is taking place in close co-operation with the community partners, various studies and surveys have been carried out within the framework of the TAO project:

• Older Persons and Online Communities: Motives, Incentives, and Barriers (Exploratory Study)
  In this study, the barriers, needs, preferences, benefits and motivating factors of the target group (60plus) were investigated in order to identify promising approaches for the development of technical and non-technical solutions.
• Preliminary study with a focus on existing community members (Preliminary Study “Volunteers”)
  In this study, the needs, preferences and attitudes of existing community members regarding the increased inclusion of new/older users are being identified . Furthermore, facilitating and motivating factors that could encourage existing community members to participate actively in the mobilization of new older users are being investigated .
• Survey on the implications of Internet usage on social inclusion and well-being of the elderly
  Does the use of the internet and online communities make a (positive or negative) difference regarding social inclusion and well-being among seniors? – In order to answer this question, we will conduct a longitudinal two-wave survey among “onliners”, completed by a survey among “offliners”.
• Secondary analysis of survey data
  The data of two pre-existing online surveys of the world’s largest online collaboration communities – Wikipedia and the Free/Libre and Open Source Software communities – are being analysed in order to gain insights with regard to the characteristics of the target group and the effectiveness of the measures to be implemented in the project.