Explaining information technology use with the usefulness scale: a comparison with user age.

Understanding and predicting the use of information technology is an important problem in healthcare management. The relationships among user characteristics and information technology have generally been weak. This paper describes a recently developed scale that measures perceived usefulness of information technology. Following this description, the scale is compared with user age in ability to explain information technology use. The results suggest perceived usefulness explains a significant proportion of the variance in use (r2 = .13, p < or = 0.0001), while age was not a significant predictor. Implications and suggestions for use of the usefulness scale are discussed.