A pilot study of using diaries method for collecting spiritual experiences data among older adults

• Published in: ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences
• Main Author: Ahmad N.A.; Zainal A.; Razak F.H.R.; Wan Adnan W.A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asian Research Publishing Network 2015
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84953439199&partnerID=40&md5=1cdab86dedc9b61bd7c3520b31829a76

The increasing number of aging populations worldwide versus vast developments in mobile technology creates questions on how older adults adapt and apply mobile technology in their daily life. As older adults is said to be more spiritually inclined, thus, mobile spiritual applications can work as medium of serving the older adults spiritual needs. A lot of HCI work still need to be done to ensure the development of spiritual apps is tailored to older adults needs. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate, from an older adult's perspective, the most workable diary design to collect spiritual experiences data by using an Android mobile application known as Quran Bahasa Melayu. Older adult participants were selected based on snowball sampling technique to use mobile spiritual application's using a tablet PC for seven consequent days. The participants were asked to fill up three different types of diary which are daily diary, structured diary and also 3E diary to find out the diary design that works well with older adults. Daily diary appears to be a good tool in describing older adult daily activities in detail, while structured diary fails to achieve any target. 3E diary manages to record very rich data pertaining older adults feeling, emotions and experiences in terms of facial expressions from the drawing and written text. Therefore, this case study suggests that 3E diary is the most workable diary design in capturing spiritual experiences data among group of older adults while engaging mobile spiritual applications and interview method could be used as complement method to the diary.