Digital literacy training, sense of control, and short-term cognitive outcomes in community-based elderly care: A quasi-experimental study

Digital exclusion may constrain everyday functioning among older adults as access to information, services, and social participation increasingly depends on digital competence. This controlled quasi-experimental pretest-posttest-follow-up study examined whether an 8-week Digital Control Cognition Model-based digital literacy program improved digital literacy, sense of control, and short-term cognitive performance among older adults attending community-based elderly care centers. A total of 132 participants aged 65 years or older were assigned to an intervention group or a usual-care waitlist control group, with 66 participants in each group. The intervention comprised 16 structured sessions delivered over 8 weeks, followed by an 8-week post-intervention follow-up. Outcomes included sense of control, delayed memory, visual scanning and processing speed, brief cognitive screening performance, and mobile-device proficiency. Repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, and bias-corrected bootstrap mediation were applied. At post-intervention, the intervention group showed higher sense-of-control scores (22.6 vs 18.7), better delayed-memory scores (6.4 vs 5.0), faster Trail Making Test Part A completion (50.4 vs 60.8 s), lower 6-item Cognitive Impairment Test scores (4.1 vs 5.4), and higher mobile-device proficiency scores (54.6 vs 38.4) than the control group. Significant indirect effects through sense of control were observed for delayed memory (0.318), Trail Making Test performance (−1.784), and brief cognitive screening scores (−0.286). The findings indicate that structured digital literacy training may strengthen digital competence and perceived control while supporting short-term improvement or maintenance in selected cognitive test outcomes. Longer follow-up and more rigorous randomized designs are required before concluding that such training alters cognitive aging.