Share to seek: The effects of disease complexity on health information-seeking behavior

Abstract

Background: Web-based question and answer (Q&A) sites have emerged as an alternative source for serving individuals' health information needs. Although a number of studies have analyzed user-generated content in web-based Q&A sites, there is insufficient understanding of the effect of disease complexity on information-seeking needs and the types of information shared, and little research has been devoted to the questions concerning multimorbidity. Objective: This study aims to investigate seeking of health information in Q&A sites at different levels of disease complexity. Specifically, this study investigates the effects of disease complexity on information-seeking needs, types of information shared, and stages of disease development. Methods: First, we selected a random sample of 400 questions separately from each of the Q&A sites: Yahoo Answers and WebMD Answers. The data cleaning resulted in a final set of 624 questions from the two sites. We used a mixed methods approach, including qualitative content analysis and quantitative statistical analysis. Results: The one-way results of ANOVA showed significant effects of disease complexity (single vs multimorbid disease questions) on two information-seeking needs: diagnosis (F1, 622=5.08; P=.02) and treatment (F1, 622=4.82; P=.02). There were also significant differences between the two levels of disease complexity in two stages of disease development: the general health stage (F1, 622=48.02; P