Designing a Conceptual Model for Enhancing Older Adults’ Health Literacy in the Media Based on Audience Needs: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract

This study aimed to design a conceptual model for enhancing older adults’ health literacy in the media based on audience needs and to explain the conditions, strategies, and outcomes shaping this process. This qualitative study employed the systematic grounded theory approach based on the Strauss and Corbin paradigm. Participants were 12 experts in communication and media, health education and promotion, health literacy, and gerontology, selected initially through purposive sampling and subsequently through theoretical sampling. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews, and sampling continued until theoretical saturation was reached. Data collection and analysis were conducted concurrently using open, axial, and selective coding as well as the constant comparative method. Analysis began with 687 meaning units and resulted in 342 initial codes, 186 refined codes, 53 concepts, 21 subcategories, and six main categories. Causal conditions included increasing health information needs associated with aging, inadequate adaptation of health content, exposure to heterogeneous information, and increasing reliance on media for health-related decisions. The central phenomenon was defined as the need for media health literacy adapted to aging characteristics and the necessity of audience-centered health communication. Contextual conditions included individual characteristics, social and family circumstances, media-use patterns, and access to technology and services. The digital divide, media distrust, misinformation, structural limitations, and economic and cultural barriers emerged as intervening conditions. Major strategies included simplifying and age-adapting health messages, validating sources, teaching information-evaluation skills, diversifying communication channels, personalizing content, strengthening the role of families, promoting interactive communication, and improving coordination between health institutions and media organizations. Enhancing older adults’ health literacy through media requires a shift from general and one-way information delivery toward an audience-centered, trustworthy, interactive, multi-channel communication system tailored to the actual needs and capacities of older adults.