Online Health Information Seeking by Parents for Their Children: Systematic Review and Agenda for Further Research (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Parents commonly use the internet to search for information about their child’s health-related symptoms and guide parental health-related decisions. Despite the impact of parental online health seeking on offline health behaviors, this area of research remains understudied. Previous literature has not adequately distinguished searched behaviors when searching for oneself or one`s child. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this review is to examine prevalences and associated variables of parent-child online health information seeking; investigate parents’ health-related online behavior regarding how they find, use, and evaluate information; and identify barriers and concerns that they experience during the search. Based on this analysis, we develop a conceptual model of potentially important variables of proxy online health information seeking, with a focus on building an agenda for further research. METHODS We conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review of the PsycINFO, JMIR, and PubMed electronic databases. Studies between January 1994 and June 2018 were considered. The conceptual model was developed using an inductive mixed methods approach based on the investigated variables in the study sample. RESULTS A total of 33 studies met the inclusion criteria. Findings suggest that parents worldwide are heavy online users of health-related information for their children across highly diverse circumstances. A total of 6 studies found high parental health anxiety, with prevalences ranging from 14% to 52%. Although parents reported wishing for more guidance from their pediatrician on how to find reliable information, they rarely discussed retrieved information from the web. The conceptual model of proxy online health information seeking includes 49 variables. CONCLUSIONS This systematic review identifies important gaps regarding the influence of health-related information on parents’ health behavior and outcomes. Follow-up studies are required to offer parents guidance on how to use the web for health purposes in an effective way, as well as solutions to the multifaceted problems during or after online health information seeking for their child. The conceptual model with the number of studies in each model category listed highlights how previous studies have hardly considered relational variables between the parent and child. An agenda for future research is presented.

Ostomy Information on the Internet—Is It Good Enough?

“…7 Studies have shown that perioperative education about ostomies can reduce complications and reduce anxiety among patients undergoing stoma surgery. 11,12 In addition, education may be ineffective or exert a negative effect on patients' health when the learner does not comprehend the education presented. [13][14][15][16] The aims of our study were to: (1) determine search engines and keywords that patients with ostomies use as they search the internet for information; (2) use this information to identify the most commonly viewed websites about ostomies in order to assess their quality using the modified DISCERN, Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP), and Quality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST) instruments; and (3) assess the readability of these websites using the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES).…”