Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 4, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: May 4, 2022 - Jun 29, 2022
Date Accepted: Aug 22, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 23, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Health Information Sourcing and Health Knowledge Quality: Repeated Cross-sectional Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
People’s health-related knowledge influences health outcomes, as this knowledge may influence whether individuals follow advice from their doctors or public health agencies. Yet little attention has been paid to where people obtain health information and how these sources influence the quality of knowledge.
Objective:
We aim to discover what sources people use to learn about health conditions and how these sources influence the quality of their health knowledge.
Methods:
We surveyed 200 different individuals at 12 timepoints from March 2020 through September 2020. At each timepoint, we elicited participants’ knowledge about causes, risk factors, and preventative interventions for eight viral (Ebola, common cold, COVID-19, Zika) and non-viral illnesses (food allergies, ALS, strep throat, stroke). Participants were further asked how they learned about each illness and to rate how much they trust various sources of health information.
Results:
We found that participants used different sources to obtain health information on common illnesses (food allergies, strep throat, stroke) compared to emerging illnesses (Ebola, common cold, COVID-19, Zika). Participants relied mainly on news media, government agencies, and social media for information about emerging illnesses, while learning about common illnesses from family, friends, and medical professionals. The number of sources participants used was positively correlated with health knowledge quality, though there was no relationship with the specific source types consulted.
Conclusions:
Building on prior work on health information seeking and factors affecting health knowledge, we now find that people systematically consult different types of sources by illness type, and that the number of sources people used affected the quality of individuals’ health knowledge. Participants relied on social media for information about COVID-19, with their knowledge accuracy of COVID-19 declining over the course of the pandemic. Interventions to disseminate health information may need to be targeted to where individuals are likely to seek out information, and these sources differ systematically by illness type.
Citation
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Copyright
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