Technology is becoming increasingly integral to the practice of occupational therapists and part of the everyday lives of clients. 'Generation Y' are purported to be naturally technologically skilled as they have grown up in the digital age. The aim of this study was to explore one cohort of 'Generation Y' occupational therapy students' skills and confidence in the use of technologies relevant to contemporary practice.
A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data from a cohort of 274 students enrolled in an Australian undergraduate occupational therapy programme.
A total of 173 (63%) students returned the survey. Those born prior to 1982 were removed from the data. This left 155 (56%) 'Generation Y' participants. Not all participants reported to be skilled in everyday technologies although most reported to be skilled in word, Internet and mobile technologies. Many reported a lack of skills in Web 2.0 (collaboration and sharing) technologies, creating and using media and gaming, as well as a lack of confidence in technologies relevant to practice, including assistive technology, specialist devices, specialist software and gaming.
Overall, the results suggested that this group of 'Generation Y' students were not universally skilled in all areas of technology relevant to practice but appear to be skilled in technologies they use regularly. Recommendations are therefore made with view to integrating social networking, gaming, media sharing and assistive technology into undergraduate programmes to ensure that graduates have the requisite skills and confidence required for current and future practice.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 January 2024.
All research outputs
#15,546,092
of 26,316,370 outputs
Outputs from Australian Occupational Therapy Journal
#436
of 746 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#212,117
of 381,466 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Australian Occupational Therapy Journal
#4
of 13 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,316,370 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 746 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.0. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 13 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
