JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Gender-sensitive approaches to health communication aim to integrate gender perspectives at all levels of communication, as an individual’s biological sex and socially assigned gender identity have an impact on whether and how one acquires what kind of health information. Because of the fast and low-cost opportunity to search for a wide range of information, the Internet seems to be a particularly suitable place for gender-specific health information about the disease of sex-specific organs and diseases where biological differences are associated with different health risks.

Objective:

The objective of our study is to inform gender-specific information provision and acquisition in two ways: The first objective is to provide a theory-driven analysis of online health information-seeking behaviors (HISB) regarding gender-specific issues. Therefore, the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model, which is one of the most integrative models of HISB, will be adopted and applied. Second, we ask for gender-specific motivational determinants of gender-specific online HISB comparing the predictors in the groups of women and men.

Methods:

Data from a stratified online survey of the German population (N = 3,000) serve to explain gender-specific online HISB and influencing patterns comparing women and men. The applicability of the PRISM to gender-specific online HISB was tested by structural equation modeling and multigroup comparison.

Results:

Our results revealed PRISM to be an effective framework to explain gender-specific online HISB. In total, the model accounted for 28.8% of the variance in gender-specific online HISB. Gender-specific subjective norms provided the most important explanatory power followed by perceived seeking control. The multigroup comparison revealed differences both regarding the explanatory power of the model and the relevance of predictors of gender-specific online HISB. The behavior under study can be better explained for men than women. For men, norms were a more relevant promoting factor, whereas the HISB of women was more strongly associated with perceived seeking control.

Conclusions:

The results are crucial for gender-sensitive targeting strategies and suggest gender-specific health information interventions addressing gender-specific subjective norms. Further, programs (e.g. online learning units) should be developed and offered to improve individuals’ (perceived) abilities to perform online searches for health information as those with higher control beliefs are more likely to access the online information.