Gender and Help Seeking by Older Adults When Learning New Technologies

A gender stereotype that has some basis in research is that men are more reluctant to ask for directions than women. We wanted to investigate whether this stereotype applies to technology-related contexts, affecting older adults' abilities to learn new technologies. To explore how help seeking and gender might relate for older adults, we conducted a controlled experiment with 36 individuals, of whom 18 identified as men and 18 identified as women, and observed how often they asked for help when learning new applications. We also conducted post-experiment interviews with participants. We found that although most participants stereotyped older men as being reluctant to ask for help in the interview, the gender difference was minimal in the experiment. Instead, individual differences had a greater effect: older participants took longer to complete tasks and participants with lower technology self-efficacy asked significantly more questions.