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Health information use: Preliminary results from a systematic review
Author(s) -
Fry Laura,
Santos Yleana E.,
Zhang Yan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proceedings of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.193
H-Index - 14
ISSN - 2373-9231
DOI - 10.1002/pra2.2015.1450520100112
Subject(s) - cinahl , psycinfo , medline , health information , thematic analysis , systematic review , health care , psychology , medicine , qualitative research , sociology , political science , social science , law
Searching for health information online is a popular behavior, yet little is known about how people use the information they find. As an initial step towards understanding this important aspect of consumer health information behavior, we conducted a systematic review. We searched three major health‐related databases, CINAHL, Medline, and PsycINFO and identified 31 articles that report consumers’ use of health information found online. Thematic analysis of these articles revealed that the most common uses of online health information were to make health decisions and lifestyle changes, and to discuss the information with healthcare professionals.