Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 11, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 27, 2021
Classification of the Use of Online Health Information Channels and Variation in Motivations for Channel Selection: A Cross-Sectional Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
The existing health education and communication research routinely measures internet use as a whole by, for example, evaluating how frequently people use the “internet” to search for health information. This fails to capture the complexity and diversity of online channel use in health information seeking. Measurement of generic internet use may cause too much error, and lends no support for media planning in a public health promotion campaign and scholarly research involving internet use.
Objective:
This study intended to present a thorough picture of patterns of people’s online health information channel use, and classify people’s use of various types of online health information channels. Under the framework of risk information seeking and processing (RISP), this study also analyzed the differences in motivations behind to offer further evidence to validate the classification scheme.
Methods:
This study sampled 542 Chinese respondents in Beijing to survey the usage of 13 commonly used online health information channels, and various socio-psychological factors associated with online health information seeking.
Results:
This study derived three categories of online health information channels: searching, browsing and scanning channels. From the perspective of RISP, the study further analyzed people’s motivations to use three types of online health information channels. Use of online searching channels is affect-driven and characterized by stronger need for cognition. Use of browsing channels is directly influenced by informational subjective norms and perceived current knowledge. Use of scanning channels is mainly influenced by informational subjective norms.
Conclusions:
The results of the study suggest that health communication practitioners and scholars are supposed to measure the “internet”, “new media” or “online media” more precisely instead of simply asking the public about the frequency of internet use in health information acquisition. Future scholarly or formative research may consider measuring usage of internet health information channel by utilizing the three-category scheme discovered by this study.
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