What Is Health Information-Seeking Behavior, and How It Impacts How People Access Health Knowledge Online?
Damian Jacob Sendler: Health information-seeking behavior is, in a way, a cluster of behaviors that people engage in to identify specific health knowledge about what they are experiencing. Each one of us has a unique experience of everyday existence. Some of us might have symptoms of lower energy. Others might feel like we have a stomach ache, or we might be concerned with ongoing influenza outbreaks around the world. Whatever the questions we have, and they relate to our health, those questions stimulate our interest in finding out more information so that we can protect ourselves and educate others. The way people access information is diverse and includes searching for stuff, collecting data, reading through with digesting it and spreading it to others through sharing on social media or during conversations with their family. All of that online behavior is, in a way a piece of health information-seeking behavior.
What Are Some Examples of Health Information-Seeking Behavior?
Damian Jacob Sendler: The best example is that of a person that experiences specific symptoms due to illness, who then goes online and tries to find answers as to why they are feeling the way they do. Whenever people access and process health information online, the behavior is considered a piece of health information-seeking behavior.
Ultimately, the most critical aspect of health information-seeking behavior is not just identifying information, but also the processing of it. The next step is what we do with that type of health advice. Some people might use the information they find online, as a guideline for defining talking points with their health care providers. Other people might use this information to go to the nearest pharmacy and try to find a medication that might help them. The danger is another group of people who take the information they find online, then process it and try to understand that, but ultimately, it makes them feel confused about their state of health.
How People Utilize Health Information They Find on the Internet?
Damian Jacob Sendler: This is something that research in this area attempts to address. There are different ways of receiving and interpreting information, whether that knowledge comes in the form of voice, video, or written materials. Every day people have access to health information through different mediums, and the social media platforms are arguably the most potent disseminators of health knowledge. What happens with that knowledge is that nobody knows whether it has any positive or negative impact. What we have to recognize that just because health knowledge gets disseminated among people, that does not mean that it makes any positive impact on their life. It could be quite the opposite where having access to specific bits of health information could be detrimental to our well being.
What Would Be an Example of a Negative Influence That Health Information Available Online Might Have on People?
Damian Jacob Sendler: Any information that introduces misinformation, or misguides people seeking help when experiencing specific symptoms could be considered negative health information. Sometimes people post information based on personal experiences as it happens in the form of blogs, and that obviously might have a misleading impact on the public’s perception regarding specific health problems. Whenever people are discouraged from seeking help from a medical professional, we know that that type of information is harmful, in its fundamental net matter.
Is Negative Health Information Spread Among People Just Like Fake News?
Damian Jacob Sendler: Absolutely, yes. Fake News can also propagate problematic health information among people, primarily when they don’t discuss so much evidence-based medicine as much as opinions and personal beliefs. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that someone’s grandma had a weird way of curing diarrhea or making sure that everyone has enough vitamins when eating certain foods. However, that is not an objective science, whenever it comes to an understanding of how medicine functions, the fundamental guiding principle is that in medicine, people provide treatments based on evidence-based guidelines. What that means is that through meticulous research and clinical practice as well as clinical trials, doctors apply proven methods of solving common health issues. And that is something that blogs or other personal opinions cannot guarantee and do not satisfy the requirement for being a prerequisite for an authoritative source of health information.
Obviously, from time to time, there are instances where someone has a unique experience and shares that experience with others. That could be seen as advantageous to some people, but let’s remember that a variety of people fall within one or two standard deviations from the norm, which means that in practice, out of hundred people that might experience specific symptoms, 96 to 98% will have the most common pathway toward treatment and addressing any further health complications and something that stems from shared knowledge and practice regarding those instances of health problems.
