JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As the world is connected by the World Wide Web, the Internet is becoming the main source to gather health information. With the novel Covid-19 pandemic, Internet’s ubiquitous use has changed the daily lives of individuals, from working from home and seeking and meeting with healthcare providers through online sites. Such heavy reliance on Internet-based technologies raises concerns regarding the accessibility of the Internet for minority populations who are likely to already face barriers when seeking health information.

Objective:

(1) To examine the level of technology access and common modes of technology used by Korean American women (KAW); and (2) To investigate how key psychosocial determinants of health such as age, education, English proficiency, and health literacy are correlated with sources of health information used by KAW and by their use of the Internet.

Methods:

We used data from a subsample of KAW (N = 157) who participated in a community-based randomized trial designed to test a health literacy-focused cancer screening intervention. In addition to descriptive statistics to summarize KAW’s Internet access and common modes of technology use, we conducted backward stepwise logistic regression analyses to substantiate the association between the psychosocial determinants of health and Internet use.

Results:

Close to two-thirds of the sample had access to the Internet and nearly all had access to a mobile phone. The Internet was the most commonly used method to obtain health information (63%) and 70% of the sample used text messaging. Nevertheless, only about 39% were very confident in using the Internet and only 30% were very confident in using text messaging. Multivariate analyses revealed that older age (>50 years) was associated with 79% lower odds of using the Internet to seek health information (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.21, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.10-0.46). The higher health literacy group (19+ on Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine) had 56% lower odds of using the Internet to acquire health information (AOR = 0.44, 95% CI = 1.13-11.18). Higher education (college+) was associated with both Internet use (AOR = 4.42, 95% CI = 1.88-9.21) and text messaging (AOR = 3.42, 95% CI = 1.55-7.54). Finally, English proficiency was associated with text messaging (AOR = 4.20, 95% CI = 1.44-12.24).

Conclusions:

The differences in modes of technology access, use, and confidence by some of the key psychosocial determinants, as observed in our study sample, have important implications when healthcare teams develop dissemination plans. Clinical Trial: NCT00857636