Impact of media use on health-related quality of life among community-dwelling elderly in Japan: A population-based study

The aim of this population-based study was to investigate the association between media use and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among the community-dwelling elderly. The study was conducted in Kurihara City of Miyagi prefecture, a typical aged community in rural Japan. Six districts were randomly selected from the all 10 districts in Kurihara, and all but institutionalized residents with 65 years of age or older (n=14097) were given a self-administered questionnaire. HRQOL was measured by Short Form-8 (SF-8), summarized into physical composites score (PCS) and mental composites score (MCS). High and low HRQOL (MCS and PCS) were defined as the top and bottom 25th percentile of HRQOL scores, respectively. Media use, health information seeking behavior, and general demographic information were also collected through a questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis adjusted for age and other possible confounders was employed to examine the relationship between two summary SF-8 scores (PCS, MCS) and the media use. 11,821 (response rate 84%) completed the questionnaire, and 58% were 65-74 years of age and 42% were 75 or older. Of those, 3046(28.9%) were using mobile phone and 973 (10.0%) were using email, while only 374 (3.7%) were accessing to the internet. Use of email (OR=0.71, 95%CI:0.53-0.94) and Internet were inversely associated with low MCS (OR=0.71, 0.50-1.00). People who had strong interests in health-related information (OR=1.67, 95% CI:1.03-2.73)were associated with high PCS. This large scale population-based study indicates that among elderly active media users are likely to maintain better HRQOL.