The Impact Of Social Media On Female College Students’ HPV Related Health Behaviors

As the second largest female health disease in the world after breast cancer,cervical cancer has caused serious harm to women’s safety and health.Medical studies have shown that persistent high-risk human papillomavirus(HPV)infection is an important cause of cervical cancer in women.It is well known that medical interventions,including vaccination and cancer screening,can prevent and treat cervical cancer.Since the launch of the first HPV vaccine in China in 2017,there have been many reports and discussions on HPV on the social media platform.As an important platform of health communication,social media’s function of “ agenda setting” helps the public understand health information more deeply,which leads to changes in cognitive attitudes and health behaviors.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct research on how social media affects public health behavior.This thesis adopts the quantitative method to carry out the research: firstly,it constructs the theoretical model between the use of social media,the risk perception of HPV,self-efficacy and HPV-related health behaviors,and then carries out the descriptive analysis,correlation analysis and path analysis on the variables,so as to verify the theoretical hypothesis and theoretical model.This thesis takes female college students as the research object and adopts the quantitative research method to carry out the theoretical model between the use of social media,the risk perception of HPV,self-efficacy and HPV-related health behaviors.Descriptive analysis,correlation analysis and path analysis of variables are used to verify theoretical hypotheses and theoretical models.After the correlation analysis of the hypothesis,three path analyses were carried out for the four variables: firstly,the health behaviors related to HPV as the dependent variable,the exposure frequency of HPV information in social media,the risk perception of HPV,and the self-efficacy of HPV were taken as the independent variables for the multiple regression analysis.Secondly,the risk perception of HPV as the dependent variable,and the exposure frequency of HPV information in social media was taken as the independent variable for the multiple regression analysis.Finally,the exposure frequency of HPV information in social media as the independent variable,and the self-efficacy of HPV was taken as the dependent variable for the multiple regression analysis.It’s shown that the path of social media affecting individual health behaviors: although social media can not directly affect the individual’s health behavior,it can indirectly affect the individual’s health behavior through individual risk perception and self-efficacy.Social media is positively correlated with risk perception and positively correlated with self-efficacy.Risk perception,self-efficacy and health behavior are positively correlated.The model once again demonstrates the importance of social media in the field of health communication.