Young Adults' Online Sexual Health Information Seeking and Evaluating Skills: Implications for Everyday Life Information Literacy Instruction

Abstract

Many young adults (particularly LGBTQ+ young people) often do not receive relevant sexual health information in school‐based health education classes, leaving them with unmet information needs, which they largely go online in order to fulfill. Meanwhile, information literacy instruction is almost exclusively provided to young adults within an academic context; thus, the knowledge and skills they learn may not be easily adapted to everyday life contexts, including health. In order to learn more about this potential mismatch and to identify potential ways in which we might improve information literacy instruction for this population, I conducted an online survey incorporating LGBTQ+ inclusive language. The results suggest that the most popular online health information evaluation strategies amongst young adults may be unreliable and, while this population may understand more reliable methods, they appear to struggle to apply these “academic” information evaluation skills to their everyday life information seeking, thus suggesting the need for improved and updated information literacy instruction that is more broadly applicable to people's everyday life information needs.

Opening the digital doorway to sexual healthcare: Recommendations from a Behaviour Change Wheel analysis of barriers and facilitators to seeking online sexual health information and support among underserved populations

“…Further, many of our barrier and facilitators findings are consistent with previous literature, offering a novel perspective from a diverse sample of underserved populations. Privacy benefits and concerns (38,57,(71)(72)(73)(74) and the value of video and audio options and simplicity (e.g., 29,38,75) have been previously reported amongst a range of populations. Further, the overwhelming volume of sources and information, need for inclusivity and personal relevancy of information, and preferences for online support to be delivered synchronously have been reported previously among sexual minority women (76) and African American youth (75), and young people (38,77,78).…”

“…To prevent widening inequalities in access to online sexual healthcare, it is vital to understand the barriers and facilitators to the digital doorway among underserved populations, theorise the factors that underpin barriers and facilitators, and then identify appropriate theoretically informed recommendations for change (45). While some research exists in this area, the existing literature base is outdated (46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51)(52) or uses exclusively quantitative methods (53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58)(59). Thus, there is an absence of contemporary, in-depth research.…”