title: Investigating Relationships Between Health-Related Problems and Online Health Information Seeking.
abstract: Online health information seeking (OHIS) functions as a coping strategy to relieve health-related stress and problems. When people rate their health as poor or felt concern about their health, they frequently visit the Internet to seek health-related information in order to understand their symptoms and treatments. Regarding this role of OHIS, it is important to understand the relationships between health-related problems and OHIS. This study applies the Common-Sense Model as a theoretical lens to examine the relationship between health-related problems (ie, diagnosis of cancer, poor self-rated health, and psychological distress) and OHIS of adults in the US. Using the Health Information National Trends Survey 4 Cycle 1 (2012), a total of 2351 adult Internet users was included in this research. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the research model, and the model adding psychological distress resulted in a statistically significant improvement in model fit. In this study, lower levels of self-rated health and higher levels of psychological distress were significantly associated with higher odds of OHIS. Study findings support the idea that individuals' low levels of self-rated health and high levels of perceived psychological distress make people search for health-related information via the Internet in order to cope with health-related concern and distress.
authors.affiliation: Author Affiliations: Graduate School of East-West Medical Science, Kyung Hee University (Dr Oh); and SSK Mental Health and Community, Kwangwoon University (Dr Song), Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Young Sam
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Na Kyoung
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Song
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D059026:Diagnostic Self Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult