Impact of web searching and social feedback on consumer decision making: A prospective online experiment

Abstract

Background: The World Wide Web has increasingly become an important source of information in health care consumer decision making. However, little is known about whether searching online resources actually improves consumers' understanding of health issues. Objectives: The aim was to study whether searching on the World Wide Web improves consumers' accuracy in answering health questions and whether consumers' understanding of health issues is subject to further change under social feedback. Methods: This was a pre/post prospective online study. A convenience sample of 227 undergraduate students was recruited from the population of the University of New South Wales. Subjects used a search engine that retrieved online documents from PubMed, MedlinePlus, and HealthInsite and answered a set of six questions (before and after use of the search engine) designed for health care consumers. They were then presented with feedback consisting of a summary of the post-search answers provided by previous subjects for the same questions and were asked to answer the questions again. Results: There was an improvement in the percentage of correct answers after searching (pre-search 61.2% vs post-search 82.0%, P