Online Health Information Seeking Behaviors Among the Thai Elderly Social Media Users

Main Article Content

jantima kheokao
Kanyarat Ubolwan
Kitsanaporn Tipkanjanaraykha
Unya Plodpluang

Abstract

This cross sectional study aimed to describe online/social media use behaviors of the and to study the online health information seeking of the 1,237 Thai elderly netizens who used internet and social media. Questionnaire was used to collect data on demographical profiles, internet and online social media uses and online health information seeking behaviors of the respondents. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; frequency distribution, percentages, mean and standard deviation. The findings revealed that: 1) The majority of the respondents were living in the central region (509, 41.1%), female (740, 59.8%), aged between 60 -69 years old (899, 72.7%) with a mean age of 66.92 years (SD = 5.53), elementary schoolers (349, 28.2%), married (781, 63.1%), had monthly income less than 5,000 baht (500, 40.4%) from the pension (330, 26.7%), and having chronic diseases (704, 56.9%), respectively. 2) Online social media use behaviors, it was found that most of respondents used personal smart/mobile phone to get online connection (932, 75.3%), use internet/online social media less than 1 hour a day (517 41.8%). Line was used by most respondents (1,060, 85.7%); age ranged from 60-69 years reported that they used the online media/social media higher than other aged groups. It was also found that most of respondents of every education level, monthly income level, and marital status used line higher than other online media/social media. 3) Online health information seeking of the elderly, the top three of contents regularly searched from the internet were healthy lifestyle (141, 11.4%), treatments (136, 11.0%), and medication (123, 9.9%). Opinion towards health information seeking behaviors and trust of health information sources revealed that the respondents reported the highest average mean score on it's hard to know which ones to follow (mean=1.88 (SD = 0.825) which was at low level.

Article Details

Section
Research Article

References

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