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Who Uses the Web as a Health Information Source?Department of Social and Political Sciences/Information Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Tavastgatan 13, 20500 Åbo, Finland kristina.eriksson-backa{at}abo.fi This article presents some preliminary results from a larger ongoing study on health information in media. An attempt is made to profile typical users of Web resources concerning health. Three groups of people in different health situations were interviewed on their use of different information sources in their search for health information. In this paper the focus is on health information sources found on the Internet. The aim was to examine whether there are any differences in the use due to gender, age, education and occupation as well as current health status. The use of a point-giving system, which gave higher points to sources used more frequently or considered more reliable by the respondents, revealed differences between pregnant women, persons with diabetes and a control group consisting of healthy people. The groups of pregnant women and diabetics were generally more active Web-users than the control group and used discussion forums and health portals more while members of the control group read online newspapers more actively than the others did. Some differences in gender and age were also found: men were more likely to read newspapers than women, but women were more active users of discussion forums. The younger respondents were also often more active than the older ones were. The findings were generally similar to those of previous studies.
Key Words: Health information • web resources • web-users
Health Informatics Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2,
93-101 (2003) This article has been cited by other articles:
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