Active and passive acquisition of health-related information on the web by college students

Abstract

Using the Internet as a source of health information is increasing among the college population (Escoffery et al., 2005; Ogan et al., 2008). A number of studies investigated how frequently they actively seek health-related information on the Internet, popular topics, used online sources (Baxter et al., 2008; Buhi et al., 2009; Escoffery et al., 2005; Hogan & Sweeney, 2012; Zuckerman, 2009). However, none of the studies compared if there is any difference between their active and passive health information acquisition. This poster presents the preliminary findings of a study on how college students obtain online health information, health-related topic and web-based sources they use to obtain health information in both passive and active manner, as well as if there is any difference in information acquisition style based on the information source. 2193 survey responses were collected using Qualtrics software. The findings of this study suggest that college students tend to actively seek health information more often than accidentally stumble upon it. The most common topic students look for in both passive and active manner are diet/nutrition and fitness/exercise. Health information is actively sought using search engines and Wikipedia and passively encountered using social networking sites and search engines.