Accepted for/Published in: Online Journal of Public Health Informatics
Date Submitted: Aug 18, 2023
Date Accepted: Dec 3, 2023
A Pilot Study of Health Information Seeking Behavior on Social Networking Sites and Self-Treatment
ABSTRACT
We contribute to emerging research on health information seeking behavior by investigating demographic factors, social media use for health information seeking purposes, and the relationship between health information seeking and occurrences of self-treatment. Data were collected from an online survey in which participants were asked to describe sociodemographic factors about themselves, social media usage patterns, perceptions about their motivations for health information seeking on social media platforms, and whether or not they attempted self-treatment after their social media-related health information seeking. We conducted a binomial logistic regression with self-treatment as a dichotomous categorical dependent variable. Results indicate that significant predictors of self-treatment based on information obtained from social networking sites include race, education, exercise frequency, and a degree of trust in the information received.
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