Health information-seeking behaviors on the Internet among diabetic and healthy women

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of the ways that healthy and diabetic women find health information on the Internet and how they evaluate that information.;This qualitative study used a triangulation of methodologies: focus groups, in-depth interviews and think-aloud protocols. The four focus groups involved 18 participants, of which 12 were healthy women and 6 were diabetic women. The think aloud protocols involved observing participants as they worked through three health-related information-gathering tasks on the Internet. The six healthy and six diabetic think-aloud participants also participated in-depth interviews.;The research questions were structured around the six-stage health information acquisition model suggested by Freimuth, Stein and Kean. The study asked participants to describe (1) their prompts for going on the Internet for health information; (2) their online informational goals; (3) their perceptions of the costs and benefits of online health information; (4) their search strategies on the Internet; (5) their approaches for evaluating information from their searches; and (6) their process for determining search adequacy. Discussions with participants suggested that diabetic women search less often online for diabetes information than for other types of health information. Diabetic women differ in their search and evaluative strategies when looking for information on diabetes, but search in similar ways to healthy women when searching for other types of health information.;Search behaviors were influenced by participants' views of the Internet as a limitless source of information and their perceptions of shortcomings in the U.S. health care system. Participants turned to the Internet in part to help meet informational needs that were not being met in traditional health care settings.;The participants' overall experience level with the Internet also affected online search behaviors. Experienced users had developed more elaborate search strategies and more complex evaluative techniques.;Online health information search behaviors were connected to offline searching behaviors, with participants moving on and off the Internet to answer specific health questions. The participants in general were cautious of the health information they found online.;Finally, this study outlined a preliminary model of online health information searching based on the collected data.