JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital communication technologies play an important role in the health communication strategy of governments and public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The internet and social media have become important sources of health information on coronavirus and protective behaviours. In addition, the COVID-19 infodemic spreads faster than the coronavirus itself and interferes with governmental health communication efforts. This puts national public health containment strategies in jeopardy, which is why digital health literacy is a key competence to navigate coronavirus related health information and service environments.

Objective:

We aimed to investigate the digital health literacy and online information seeking behaviour during the early stage of the coronavirus pandemic among university students.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study among N=14.916 university students aged ≥18 years from 130 universities across all sixteen federal states of Germany was conducted using an online survey. Next to sociodemographic characteristics (sex, age, subjective social status) measures included five subscales from the Digital Health Literacy Instrument (DHLI), which has been adapted to the specific coronavirus context. Online information seeking behaviour was investigated by examining the online sources used and the topics that students search for in connection with the coronavirus. Data were analysed using univariate and bivariate analysis.

Results:

Across digital health literacy dimensions, the greatest difficulties could be found for assessing the reliability of health-related information (42.3%) and the ability to determine whether the information is written with commercial interest (38.9%). Moreover, respondents also indicated that they most frequently have problems finding the information they are looking for (30.4%). Stratified by sociodemographic characteristics, significant differences were found to the disadvantage of female university students for the dimensions ‘information searching’ and ‘evaluating reliability’. Search engines, news portals and websites of public bodies were most often used by the respondents as source to search for information on COVID-19 and related issues. Female students were found to use social media and health portals more frequently, while male students use Wikipedia and other online encyclopaedias and YouTube more often. The use of social media was associated with a low ability to critically evaluate information, while opposite differences were observed for the use of public websites.

Conclusions:

Although digital health literacy is, in summary, well developed, there is still a significant proportion of university students that face difficulties with certain abilities to deal with information. There is need to strengthen the digital health literacy capacities of university students using tailored interventions but also to improve the quality of health information in the internet.