Purpose -By selectively reviewing theory-driven survey studies on internet health information seeking, the paper aims to provide an informal assessment of the theoretical foundations and research methods that have been used to study this information behavior. Design/methodology/approach -After a review of the literature, four theory-driven quantitative survey studies are analyzed in detail. Each study is examined in terms of: theoretical framework; research variables that form the focus of the study; research design (sampling, data collection and analysis); and findings and results of hypothesis testing and model testing. The authors then discuss the theoretical models and analytical methods adopted, and identify suggestions that could be helpful to future researchers. Findings -Taken as a whole, the studies reviewed point strongly to the need for multidisciplinary frameworks that can capture the complexity of online health information behavior. The studies developed theoretical frameworks by drawing from many sources -theory of planned behavior, technology acceptance model, uses and gratifications, health belief model, and information seeking models -demonstrating that an integration of theoretical perspectives from the health sciences, social psychology, communication research, and information science, is required to fully understand this behavior. The results of these studies suggest that the conceptual models and analytical methods they adopted are viable and promising. Many relationships tested showed large effect sizes, and the models evaluated were able to account for between 23 and 50 percent of the variance in the dependent variables. Originality/value -The paper represents a first attempt to compare, evaluate, and to a degree synthesize the work that has been done to develop and test theoretical models of health information seeking on the web.

Background: Librarians often teach evidence-based practice (EBP) within health sciences curricula. It is not known what teaching methods are most effective.

This paper presents preliminary results from a study of how women in information technology (IT) professions use a range of information sources in their day-to-day work activities. Through a questionnaire survey, the study investigates the effects of Perceived Source Accessibility and Perceived Source Quality on the selection and use of information sources. Thirteen information sources, including the World Wide Web and Web-based computer-mediated communication, were identified. Sixty-seven participants completed the survey. The most frequently used information source is the World Wide Web, followed by mass media, colleagues in the same department, computer-mediated communication, business professionals and associates, and colleagues in a different groupldepartment. The least used information sources are the internal library, and competitors. For many of the sources, there was a strong relationship between perceived source quality and source usage. This finding runs counter to early, well-known studies that concluded that scientists and engineers selected sources based only on their accessibility. Surprisingly, the present study did not find a significant relationship between source accessibility and source usage. The implications for research are discussed.

One of the primary purposes of using the Web is to find health information for personal health conditions and for the health conditions of care recipients. Women use the Web to find health information more so than men. Information on many health topics is available online. However, many studies have shown that the quality of content on health information Web sites is poor. The narrow focus of quality rating instruments that assess the content quality of health Web sites solely on the basis of adherence to clinical treatment guidelines is called into question. Web user-defined quality criteria obtained from observational studies offer a more realistic perspective. Semistructured interviews on health information seeking on the Web conducted with five women who have chronic mental health conditions demonstrate that several criteria to assess the reliability of online health information are utilized during online searching. The key criteria for quality assessment are the comprehensiveness, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and currency of health information on mental health Web sites. Hospital librarians can play a key role to ensure that mental health patients have access to consumer health information that meets these criteria for reliability, both through the provision of instruction on the selection high-quality information resources to mental health patients and their caregivers and through the development of a comprehensive list of high-quality mental health information resources hosted on the hospital's Web site and available as a handout in the hospital library. Furthermore, hospital

Relevance is the central concept in information retrieval yet studies of the quality of health Web sites have focused exclusively on the reliability of on-line health information. Results from the Web survey component of a multi-method study of Canadian women who seek health information on the Web reveal the importance of relevance as an attribute of quality assessment. Gender differences in health conditions and the geographical context of health information and delivery of health services are identified by study participants as dimensions of the contextual or situational relevance of health information. Survey respondents rated 13 types of health information sources in terms of their perceived relevance and reliability. Health care practitioners, books and pamphlets/fact sheets received high ratings on both attributes of source quality. Web sites received favourable ratings on relevance but intermediate on reliability.