Adult Education, the Use of Information and Communication Technologies and their Impact on Elderly’s Quality of Life: A Case Study

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among scholars on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their beneficial effects on elderly wellbeing; almost all contributions support the positive impact of ICTonthe older population because their use has been demonstrated to enhance social participation and psychosocial wellbeing.This studycontributes to the extant literature by using a specific and comprehensive measure of quality of life, the WHOQol-Bref, on a sample of 341 individuals attending the University of Third Age in an Italian town. Three different model specificationswere built in order to test the impact of different aspects of ICTuse on elderly’s quality of life, respectively: i) frequency of ICT use, ii) locationof ICT use andiii) kind of ICT used. Results corroborate the findings of existing literature and provide insights on policy measures aimed at favoringa process of active ageing across western countries.