Women are the primary users of health information in general, and this seems to be true online as well. Baker et al (2003) found that male odds of using the internet for health information were about half of female odds (Inconsistent with Pew/Internet, 2005). Pennbridge et al (1999) found that about 60% of health site users were women, in the same year that women first made up 50% of the total online community (according to Cline and Haynes, 2001).
Those who grew up with the internet are probably most affected. Gray et al (2005) found that most adolescents (US and UK sample, 11-19) had used the internet for health information, but maintained skepticism about the credibility of internet sources. Cotten and Gupta (2004) report that age, education, and income -- not gender -- are greatest discriminants of using the internet for health information (as opposed to health-information seeking offline).
(see comments for excerpt from Gupta & Cotten)
Okay, so a three-part series probably demonstrates that this caught my interest better than any three sentence summary I could give. When my father was diagnosed with leukemia, my mother threw herself whole-heartedly into researching it. She also spent a lot of energy researching her mother's cancer, and my sister's CFIDS. Health research (especially into alternative treatments) is a major interest for my mother. So, it's really no wonder that I tend to look at it as a feminine pursuit. Myself, I probably get my 80-85% of my health information online. I do end up looking for my own information a fair amount of the time, because it's unusual for me to find a doctor with any experience treating transsexuals.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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Excerpt from Gupta & Cotten, 2004: I thought this was incredibly on-topic and awesome, and I wanted to share it:
Studies also show that women are more likely to seek health information online than are men (Fox & Fallows, 2003; Hern, Weitkamp, Hillard, Trigg, & Guard, 1998; Fox & Rainie, 2000). Men and women have other differences in their online health seeking patterns. Women are likely to conduct Internet searches focused on an illness or its symptoms and, as the most active health seekers, are more likely to register strong positive beliefs regarding the benefits of online health searches. Men are more likely than women to allow Internet information to affect their searches,* and they are less concerned than are women about the credibility of health information found online. Men's searches tend to focus on the prognosis and treatment of a disease, and they are more inclined than women to use their newfound information when asking follow-up questions of their providers (Fox & Rainie, 2000).
* See Bastardi and Shafir (1998), “On the Pursuit and Misuse of Useless Information” for a fascinating study regarding the weight non-instrumental information can play in affecting major decisions when it is actively pursued (as in an Internet search).
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