THIS DOI METADATA WAS LAST UPDATED: 2024-01-10 23:09
Full Title
SALUTE E SOCIETÀ
Publisher
FrancoAngeli
ISSN
1723-9427 (Printed Journal)
1972-4845 (Online Journal)
Journal Volume Number
22
Journal Issue Number
3
Journal Issue Designation
3
Journal Issue Date
2023
Full Title
Measuring Health Information-Seeking Behavior: The Online Self-care Scale
By (author)
First Page
177
Last Page
195
Language of text
English
Publication Date
2023/11
Copyright
2023 FrancoAngeli srl
Main description
During the last decades, researchers have shown an increased attention towards the practice of health information seeking online. This interest has been driven by a desire to understand how it influences health beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors among laypersons. Although many tools have been proposed to measure health information seeking, they present some limits. Through an online survey among 783 Italian university students, our study aims at developing a self-report instrument to measure individuals' online health information-seeking behavior, the Online Self-care Scale (OSS), considering the twofold activity of seeking and employing information (the "Information seeking" and "Self-care practice"). We examined the reliability and construct validity of the OSS's self-report scale and explored the association between Online Self-Care Scale and gender, socioeconomic status (SES), self-reported health status, and digital health literacy. Our findings show both acceptable discriminant and convergent validities for the OSS. The validity has also been assessed through the known-group validity, namely evaluating if OSS can discriminate between groups of individuals demonstrating different scores on the test. Therefore, the OSS Scale is a valid and reliable instrument to measure the level of involvement of individuals in health information retrieval, allowing researchers to distinguish between a merely information-seeking activity and an application of the information by the seekers.
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