Health Information Pt 3: The role of the internet

[differenceblog]

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

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Excerpt from Cotten & Gupta 2004

[differenceblog]

I thought this excerpt from the literature review 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, 2 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).

2See Bastardi and Shafir (1998), “On the