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Health information-seeking behaviour on the Internet and health literacy among older Australians
[journal article]
Abstract Objective: This paper investigates the relationship between health information-seeking behaviour on the Internet and health literacy in the population of older Australians. Methods: Data was obtained from the Adults Literacy and Life Skills (ALLS) Survey conducted in 2006. Health literacy was assess... view more
Objective: This paper investigates the relationship between health information-seeking behaviour on the Internet and health literacy in the population of older Australians. Methods: Data was obtained from the Adults Literacy and Life Skills (ALLS) Survey conducted in 2006. Health literacy was assessed using a specific scale designed to measure health literacy proficiency. Internet usage for health information seeking purposes was elicited from responses to a direct question. Data were analysed using simple unweighted logistic modelling techniques with stratification by education levels. Results: Older people with medium level of education and had a higher health literacy proficiency were 4 times as likely to be frequent users of the Internet for the purposes of searching for health information (OR=3.7, 95%C.I.=1.3-10.3), and about 3 times as likely to be infrequent users, (OR=2.6, 95%C.I.=1.6-4.4) when compared to non-users. For higher education levels, only infrequent usage was significantly associated with health literacy. No relationships were found for lower education levels. It is important that health-related information for older people is offered according to their comprehensive ability. Conclusions: The results obtained suggest that there is a significant interaction effect between health information-seeking behaviour on the Internet and education levels, on health literacy. For those who had attained a post-secondary education level, there were significant associations between the exposure and outcome variables in a progressive manner with the strength of associations increasing from infrequent users to frequent users. This suggested a dose-response relationship between exposure and outcome.... view less
Keywords
Australia; health education; competence; elderly; information; health behavior; Internet
Classification
Interactive, electronic Media
Medical Sociology
Free Keywords
health literacy; health information seeking; PIAAC
Document language
English
Publication Year
2012
Page/Pages
p. 1-7
Journal
Electronic Journal of Health Informatics, 7 (2012) 2
ISSN
1446-4381
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0