Service consciousness and service knowledge among older Americans

This article explores statistical relationships between socioeconomic characteristics of elderly persons in a large region of California and their consciousness and knowledge of services available to them. Regression and probit estimation are used to analyze survey data. Service knowledge is a prerequisite to utilization or informal referrals and general consciousness of services increases the probability that older persons will search for services to meet their needs. Education, age, sex, rurality, and minority status are found to be associated with service consciousness and knowledge, although a number of other characteristics have significant associations for at most a few services.