Open AccessTaking the HINTS about health: An analysis of the health information behavior of a sample of the U.S. public
Author(s) -
Chan Katherine,
Jean Beth St.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.14505001154
Subject(s) - respondent , health information national trends survey , information seeking , psychology , sample (material) , health information , public health , the internet , educational attainment , perception , applied psychology , medicine , computer science , health care , political science , world wide web , information retrieval , nursing , chemistry , chromatography , neuroscience , law
Preliminary findings are presented from a secondary analysis of recent Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) data. HINTS data is collected and made available for public use by the National Cancer Institute. The goal of this analysis was to discover patterns in respondents' health‐related information seeking practices, their confidence in their ability to obtain health information, the types of barriers they face when looking for health information, the sources they consult for health information, the types of health‐related information activities they perform on the Internet, and their relative levels of trust toward health information from various sources. We also sought to identify associations between each of these variables and respondent age and educational attainment. The SPSS version of the HINTS 4 Cycle 1 dataset was downloaded and prepared for data analysis. Cross‐tabulations and chi‐square tests for independence were run. The findings reveal several interesting patterns in people's health‐related information seeking practices and perceptions, as well as some intriguing statistically significant associations between these practices/perceptions and respondent age and educational attainment.