Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Jul 14, 2025
Date Accepted: Jan 8, 2026
Healthy Lifestyle Practices, Online Health Information-Seeking Behaviors and Internet Usage Among Pregnant Women: A Multigroup Structural Equation Modeling Approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
The internet has become a significant resource for health education, particularly for women who wish to learn about healthy lifestyle during pregnancy. However, it is still unclear how pregnant women search for information online, particularly within specific groups.
Objective:
This study explored the relationship between healthy lifestyle practices, online health information-seeking behaviors, and internet usage among 1,905 pregnant women.
Methods:
Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the relationships between the appropriate intake of food groups (AI), healthy diet practices (HD), online dietary advice (ID), online physical activity advice (IP), and internet usage (IU), based on five hypotheses rooted in theoretical concepts. We employed a multigroup SEM approach to examine these hypotheses across various ages, ethnicities, body mass indices (BMI), and categories of pregnant groups.
Results:
Our results confirmed five hypotheses, indicating significant relationships among the variables: AI was positively linked to HD (β=0.262; P<0.001); HD was positively linked to ID (β=0.168; P<0.001); ID was positively linked to IP (β=0.185; P<0.001); IP was positively linked to IU (β=0.190; P<0.001); and HD was negatively linked to IU (β=-0.208; P<0.001). The multigroup SEM analyses yielded significant differences in Hypotheses 2 and 3 when comparing different age groups (P=0.009), BMI categories (P=0.030), and number of pregnancies (P=0.003).
Conclusions:
Our findings offer valuable insights for developing customized online interventions aimed at encouraging a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy.
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Copyright
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