Study On Internet Health Information Seeking Behavior Of College Students And Its Influencing Factors

This study investigates the Internet health information seeking behavior of college students and factors influencing the seeking behavior,identifies the relationships among eHealth literacy,source characteristics,social support,access to medical services,behavior intent and Internet health information seeking behavior.it is helpful to improve college student's ability to obtain high quality health information and use it correctly.Base on literature review and pre-interview,the structural equation model of influencing factors is built.An sample of 766 college students were collected from Zhejiang University,Guizhou University,Southwest University,Zhengzhou College and etc.SPSS and Mplus were used for data analysis.Results show that the health status of college students is worrying,and they face many health problems in their daily life.There are significant differences in health problems faced by different groups of students.The most demanding health information for college students is disease symptoms and treatments,and the most focused health topics are diet nutrition and weight-loss fitness.The Internet is the most popular health information source for college students.Individual characteristics(gender,major,family income level and area university located)significantly influence whether college students seek health information online.However,when it comes to frequency of seeking online few individual and demographic differences exist.The study also found that the behavior intent have no significant effect on students' Internet health information seeking behavior;eHealth literacy has a positive effect on source characters,behavior intent and IHISB;source characters positively influence behavior intent and seeking behavior;access to medical services has a negative effect on behavior intent;social support is positively associated with source characters and seeking behaviorS.