TY - JOUR
T1 - Educated but anxious
T2 - How emotional states and education levels combine to influence online health information seeking
AU - Myrick, Jessica Gall
AU - Willoughby, Jessica Fitts
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the National Cancer Institute for making the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) publicly available for researchers like them to use. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2017.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - This study combined conceptual frameworks from health information seeking, appraisal theory of emotions, and social determinants of health literatures to examine how emotional states and education predict online health information seeking. Nationally representative data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 4, Cycle 3) were used to test the roles of education, anxiety, anger, sadness, hope, happiness, and an education by anxiety interaction in predicting online health information seeking. Results suggest that women, tablet owners, smartphone owners, the college educated, those who are sad some or all of the time, and those who are anxious most of the time were significantly more likely to seek online health information. Conversely, being angry all of the time decreased the likelihood of seeking. Furthermore, two significant interactions emerged between anxiety and education levels. Discrete psychological states and demographic factors (gender and education) individually and jointly impact information seeking tendencies.
AB - This study combined conceptual frameworks from health information seeking, appraisal theory of emotions, and social determinants of health literatures to examine how emotional states and education predict online health information seeking. Nationally representative data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 4, Cycle 3) were used to test the roles of education, anxiety, anger, sadness, hope, happiness, and an education by anxiety interaction in predicting online health information seeking. Results suggest that women, tablet owners, smartphone owners, the college educated, those who are sad some or all of the time, and those who are anxious most of the time were significantly more likely to seek online health information. Conversely, being angry all of the time decreased the likelihood of seeking. Furthermore, two significant interactions emerged between anxiety and education levels. Discrete psychological states and demographic factors (gender and education) individually and jointly impact information seeking tendencies.
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U2 - 10.1177/1460458217719561
DO - 10.1177/1460458217719561
M3 - Article
C2 - 28728457
AN - SCOPUS:85071280713
SN - 1460-4582
VL - 25
SP - 649
EP - 660
JO - Health informatics journal
JF - Health informatics journal
IS - 3
ER -
