Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 6, 2023
Date Accepted: May 3, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Characteristics of Users and Non-Users of Symptom Checkers in Germany: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Previous UK, US and Canadian studies revealed that users of symptom checkers are predominantly female, younger than average and have higher levels of formal education. Little data is available for Germany, and no study has so far compared factors associated with usage of symptom checkers to factors associated with awareness of and benefitting from these applications.
Objective:
We explore the sociodemographic and individual characteristics that are associated with awareness, usage, and perceived usefulness of symptom checkers (tools that support self-diagnosis and self-triage) in the German population.
Methods:
A cross-sectional online survey with 1,084 German residents was conducted in July 2022 regarding several characteristics and the awareness and usage of symptom checkers. Using random sampling from a commercial panel we collected participant responses stratified to reflect the German population. The collected data were analyzed exploratively.
Results:
16.3% (177/1084) of respondents were aware of symptom checkers and 6.5% (71/1084) have used them before. Among users, 40.8% (29/71) considered these tools useful. Those aware of symptom checkers were younger (M = 28.8, SD = 14.6 vs. M = 38.3, SD = 25.7), more often female (60.5%, 107/177 vs. 49.9%, 453/907) and had higher formal education levels (40.7% with a university/college degree vs. 28.2%). While the same trend can be observed when comparing users with the remaining participants, we did not find meaningful differences in these characteristics when comparing users to those non-users aware of symptom checkers. Those considering these systems as useful had a higher self-efficacy (M = 4.21, SD = 0.66 vs. M = 4.07, SD = 0.48) and a higher income (M = 2591€, SD = 1104€ vs. M = 1627€, SD = 649€). Women considered symptom checkers more often not useful (29.5%, 13/44) than men (15.4%, 4/26).
Conclusions:
Our study replicates findings from other countries regarding symptom checker users in a German sample. However, it also hints at some misalignments between factors associated with using and benefiting from symptom checkers, i.e., with some groups potentially benefiting from these tools uninclined to use them, and others inclined to use them often not benefiting from them.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.