Health information seeking among people with multiple chronic conditions: Contextual factors and their associations mined from questions in social media

Information Seeking and Receiving of Older Adults with Diabetes in the Online Health Community: An Information Need Contextualization Perspective

Online health communities (OHCs) are important online health communication channels for older adults with diabetes to access health information. When seeking health information, they often disclose a variety of contextual information (e.g., socio-economic situations) in their questions. Selective contextual information disclosure is a type of communication strategy for users in OHCs to elicit replies from others. In this study, we adopted text analysis to investigate what contextual information older adults with diabetes disclose to articulate their information needs and used the fixed-effect Poisson model to examine the relationships between different types of contextual information disclosure and informational support receipt. Our analyses were based on a dataset of 4,505 questions and corresponding replies from an online diabetes community. The results showed that cognitive information is the most frequently disclosed contextual information, while older adults tend to disclose demographic information in their questions less. Providing demographic and situational details in questions can enhance informational support receiving, resulting in an increased number of informational supports. However, disclosing cognitive, affective, informational channels, or support information does not significantly affect the informational support receiving. These findings can contribute to extending our existing understanding of information seekers' communication strategies in OHCs.

Topics of questions and community interaction in social Q&A during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

Considering social distancing requirements and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread health mis/disinformation on social media, filling the pandemic-related information gap is critical.

OBJECTIVES

This study explored COVID-19-related question topics, topic correlation, evolving trends, and community interactions by leveraging data from a health question-answering (Q&A) community (public and health professionals) over a 2-year period.

METHODS

A total of 828 questions were collected and manually reviewed from a health Q&A and classified into 2492 codes. Question topic correlations, trends, and community interactions were generated using different statistical techniques.

RESULTS

Thirty-seven topics were identified, and strong topic correlations were observed between the cognitive layer and other layers. These topics changed as the pandemic developed. Community interaction analyses revealed topics that were popular but received comparatively fewer responses.

DISCUSSION

The findings could illuminate the dynamic changes in people's interests and concerns related to COVID-19 and their experiences of exchanging information in social Q&A communities.

CONCLUSION

This study examined the practical significance of understanding topics of interest during a pandemic. The findings can inform the design of social health Q&A platforms that could reduce the risks of misinformation and disinformation.

Association of multimorbidity with the use of health information technology

Objective

To examine the association of multimorbidity with health information technology use among adults in the USA.

Methods

We used cross-sectional study design and data from the Health Information National Trends Survey 5 Cycle 4. Health information technology use was measured with ten variables comprising access, recent use, and healthcare management. Unadjusted and adjusted logistic and multinomial logistic regressions were used to model the associations of multimorbidity with health information technology use.

Results

Among adults with multimorbidity, health information technology use for specific purposes ranged from 37.8% for helping make medical decisions to 51.7% for communicating with healthcare providers. In multivariable regressions, individuals with multimorbidity were more likely to report general use of health information technology (adjusted odds ratios  =  1.48, 95% confidence intervals  =  1.01-2.15) and more likely to use health information technology to check test results (adjusted odds ratios  =  1.85, 95% confidence intervals  =  1.33-2.58) compared to adults with only one chronic condition, however, there were no significant differences in other forms of health information technology use. We also observed interactive associations of multimorbidity and age on various components of health information technology use. Compared to younger adults with multimorbidity, older adults (≥ 65 years of age) with multimorbidity were less likely to use almost all aspects of health information technology.

Conclusion

Health information technology use disparities by age and multimorbidity were observed. Education and interventions are needed to promote health information technology use among older adults in general and specifically among older adults with multimorbidity.

Exploring information seeking of rural older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the types and sources of information sought by older adults along with their motivations in the Midwestern United States.

Design/methodology/approach

Interviews were conducted with 30 older adults residing in rural communities around the Midwestern United States during late-summer (July/August) 2020, using a protocol based on Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. The resulting data was analyzed using standard content analysis procedures, guided by the theoretical frameworks based on Dervin's Sense-Making and Williamson's Ecological Model of Information Behavior. Implications of COVID-19 for the normative behaviors described in these models are discussed.

Findings

Findings show that older adults were concerned primarily with health and political information during this period, but that this information was not necessarily sought only to address an informational need, but also to satisfy the need to maintain social and emotional connections in coping with isolation and loneliness. Sources of information that allowed for social interaction with people were favored. Wider personal networks (community members) were strained by the social distancing measures and closures. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for considering the impact of social restrictions on information seeking behaviors of older adults in a time of crisis.

Originality/value

This study is the first, known to the authors, that applied the two adopted theoretical frameworks to explore information seeking behaviors of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.