Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 9, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 11, 2019 - Jun 6, 2019
Date Accepted: Jun 15, 2019
Date Submitted to PubMed: Sep 1, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Online Health Information Seeking Among Kuwait University Students
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Due to the revolution in technology, the internet has become an important aspect in the lives of people. Modern technology is enabling people from different educational levels to use the internet for several purposes, one of which is health information seeking. Recently, online health information has become more popular among patients all over the world, as well as the general public.
Objective:
Objectives: This study aims to investigate the use of online health resources among undergraduate students in Kuwait University.
Methods:
Methods:
The study employed a cross-sectional design with students selected from eight faculties of Kuwait University, four of which are Literature and four are Science faculties. Data was collected using structured questionnaires, and analysis was done using chi-square test and binary logistic regression to determine the factors associated with seeking health information online.
Results:
Results:
The sample size obtained was 1132 with a response rate of 90.3%. Overall, the prevalence of students seeking online health information was 86.2%. The most significant factors associated with seeking health information online were age, gender, faculty, year of study, primary source of internet, and level of experience with internet use. Ninety percent of students who are more than 21 years old, used online health information compared to 83% of those who are 18 years old. Also, Female students showed a higher prevalence (88.8%) of online health information seeking than males (77.8%). All the differences found in the study were significant (P value < 0.05).
Conclusions:
Conclusion: The study concluded that a large number of people use the internet for seeking health information online. Socio-demographic factors have a significant association to online health information seeking. Therefore, education has to be provided by the doctors to the public about the websites that the people can trust.
Citation
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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.