Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Aging
Date Submitted: Jun 5, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 6, 2018 - Aug 23, 2018
Date Accepted: Aug 23, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Health Information-Seeking Behaviors of Family Caregivers: Analysis of the Health Information National Trends Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
The growing population of aging adults relies on informal caregivers to help meet their health care needs, get help with decision making, and gather health information.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to examine health information-seeking behaviors among caregivers and to identify caregiver characteristics that contribute to difficulty in seeking health information.
Methods:
Data from the Health Information National Trends Survey 5, Cycle 1 (N=3181) were used to compare health information seeking of caregivers (n=391) with noncaregivers (n=2790).
Results:
Caregivers sought health information for themselves and others using computers, smartphones, or other electronic means more frequently than noncaregivers. Caregivers born outside of the United States reported greater difficulty seeking health information (beta=.42; P=.02). Nonwhite caregivers (beta =−.33; P=.03), those with less education (beta =−.35; P=.02), those with private insurance (beta =−.37; P=.01), and those without a regular health care provider (beta =−.35; P=.01) had less confidence seeking health information. Caregivers with higher income had more confidence (beta =.12; P≤.001) seeking health information.
Conclusions:
This study highlights the prevalence of electronic means to find health information among caregivers. Notable differences in difficulty and confidence in health information seeking exist between caregivers, indicating the need for more attention to the socioeconomic status and caregivers born outside of the United States. Findings can guide efforts to optimize caregivers’ health information-seeking experiences.
Citation

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.