Parental digital health information seeking behavior in Switzerland: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background Digital media are increasingly abundant and used to seek health information, however, to date very little is known on parents’ seeking behavior in the context of child’s health and development outside English-speaking and Scandinavian countries. By investigating the prevalence of, and reasons for use, we studied parents’ perception of the Internet as a resource for improving their health-related knowledge. Methods The survey was conducted in a random sample of 2573 Swiss-German parents with at least one child aged less-than 2 years old. Parents received a mailed invitation to fill in an online questionnaire. Two reminders were sent, the later with a paper questionnaire attached. The questionnaire included questions on use of print, digital, and personal information sources, as well as different information situations: general health and development or illness. We ran descriptive analyses on information seeking behavior, type of digital media used, reasons of use. We also conducted regression analyses to explore factors associated with parental perceptions with regard to the Internet’s utility as a source for health information. Results A total of 769 questionnaires were returned (response rate 30%). Nearly all parents (91%) used digital media for seeking information on their child’s health and development, and the main reason for use was indicated as being the 24/7 availability of information. Search engines (55%) and webpages for parents (47%) were by far the most frequently used digital media. Generally, the internet is perceived as a good resource, especially by fathers (OR = 1.80, 95% CI: 1.03–3.16). However, a large percentage of parents are skeptical about the correctness of online info (91%), are unsure about their interpretive understanding, and ask for guidance from their pediatrician (67%). Conclusions The Internet has become a highly frequented source of information for Swiss-German parents on children’s health with largely valuable perceptions of its utility. Digital media are used in addition to and not in replacement of print media and personal contacts. Increasing parental guidance by health and public health professionals could improve parental digital health utilization and empower parents in the new role they adopt. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6524-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Parents’ health information seeking behaviour – does the child’s health status play a role?

“…At the same time, digital media may be considered a "poorer" medium due to a lack of non-verbal gestures, cues and signs and limited verbal cues because of technical limitations [34]. Social media, possibly the richest digital medium with respect to interaction and fast feedback, was only used by 5% of digital users in this study sample [15]. Evidence on adaption of media richness theory in connection to social media focusing on challenges as well as opportunities are still sparse [35].…”

Parents’ health information seeking behaviour – does the child’s health status play a role?

“…Having provided both online and paper-questionnaires ensured participation of both digitally affine as well as less affine parents, in fact we did reach parents who rarely used or were hesitant about informing themselves digitally [6]. It was assumed that by providing a paper questionnaire, we might be able to recruit more low-educated parents than with the online questionnaire alone [15]. However, we observe that individuals with a tertiary education are overrepresented in our responding sample.…”

“…Social media, possibly the richest medium with respect to interaction and fast feedback, was only used by 5% of digital users in this study sample [15]. Evidence on adaption of media richness theory in connection to social media focusing on challenges as well as opportunities and are still sparse [35].…”

“…While the use of digital media seems to be widespread for searches about general information on a child's health, nutrition and care [15], the question arises of how parents behave when their child has an acute illness or a long-term or permanent disability. There are hardly any studies on parental digital health information behaviour for Switzerland, and none of them directly addresses parental use of information resources in different child health contexts [16][17][18].…”

Online health information seeking behaviours of parents of children undergoing surgery in a pediatric hospital in Rome, Italy: a survey

“…Research suggests that parents seeking information about their child's health online is a consolidated behavior [5][6][7][8], with the most recent studies in Western Europe reporting that 80-90% of parents use the internet in this way [9][10][11]. Parents report seeking online information about speci c conditions and symptoms their child is experiencing [12][13], medical and surgical treatments [10,[14][15], and for more general parenting advice [12].…”