Health information literacy and the experience of 65 to 79 year old Australians

Information Literacy (IL) is presented here from a relational perspective, as people's experience of using information to learn in a particular context. A detailed practical example of such a context is provided, in the Health Information Literacy (HIL) experience of 65 to 79 year old Australians. A phenomenographic investigation found five qualitatively distinct ways of experiencing HIL: Absorbing (intuitive reception), Targeting (a planned process), Journeying (a personal quest), Liberating (equipping for independence), and Collaborating (interacting in community). These five ways of experiencing indicated expanding awareness of context (degree of orientation towards their environment), source (breadth of esteemed information), beneficiary (the scope of people who gain), and agency (amount of activity) across HIL core aspects of information, learning, and health. These results illustrate the potential contribution of relational IL to information science.