Our latest study explored how adolescents seek disease- and fitness- related online health information and what roles do perceived trust in online health information, eHealth literacy, and parental factors play. The study was authored by H. Gulec, N. Kvardova and D. Smahel and came out in Computers in Human Behavior!
Adolescents seek health information online. Such searches might involve information about diseases and treatment (e.g., COVID-19) or fitness (e.g., how to exercise). We examined the adolescent and parental factors related to online health information seeking behaviors of adolescents in a recent study and found that:
adolescents sought online health information more frequently when they evaluated their skills positively to acquire and use online health information (eHealth literacy)
adolescents were more likely to seek health information online when their parents used the internet frequently for health-related information
adolescents were more likely to look up online health information when their parents discussed the quality and trustworthiness of online health information with them
when their parents discussed the quality and trustworthiness of online health information with them, the perceived trustworthiness of online health information was more likely to guide adolescents’ online health information seeking behaviors
Overall, the findings demonstrated eHealth literacy as a crucial component and parents as significant role models in adolescents' online health information seeking behaviors. Addressing parental eHealth literacy skills might be an effective strategy to enhance the eHealth literacy and online health information seeking behaviors of this population.
How to cite this research?
Gulec, H., Kvardova, N., & Smahel, D. (2022). Adolescents' disease- and fitness-related online health information seeking behaviors: The roles of perceived trust in online health information, eHealth literacy, and parental factors. Computers in Human Behavior, 134, 107318: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107318
When adolescents engage with social media content promoting body positivity, does it impact their body-positive behavior offline? This question was the focus of our latest published study.
The 10th European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) took place at the end of September in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Many of our team members attended and presented their research. See this page for their full presentations and profiles!
