Focus groups as a tool to collect data in a community informatics project involving elderly rural women

Abstract

The main purpose of the extended project is to identify and investigate the aspects that will encourage elderly women in rural areas to use the ICT platform, and to determine what the physical design, content and applications should look like to achieve this; i.e. what are the characteristics of an ICT platform that will encourage elderly rural women to make effective use of it for information access? Constraints and factors preventing these women from using the ICT platform will also be investigated. The learning will be captured in a model or framework that could be applied in other domains and to other ICT platforms in order to encourage ICT use. A modified ICT platform, based on the feedback received from the women, will permanently be deployed in the community.