Gregor Petri?|Sara Atanasova|Tanja Kamin
Ill Literates or Illiterates? Investigating the eHealth Literacy of Users of Online Health Communities
University of Ljubljana|University of Ljubljana|University of Ljubljana
electronic health ehealth literacy important skill allows patients navigate intelligibly vast often misleading webbased world although ehealth literacy investigated general specific demographic populations yet analyzed users online health communities ohcs evidence shows ohcs important web 20 applications patients managing health time warnings expressed regarding quality relevance shared information studies exist investigate levels ehealth literacy among users ohcs differences ehealth literacy different types usersthe study aimed investigate ehealth literacy across different types users ohcs based revised extended ehealth literacy scale ehealsthe study based crosssectional web survey simple random sample 15000 registered users popular general ohc slovenia final sample comprised 644 users studied ohc extended eheals ehealse tested factor analytical procedures whereas user types identified hierarchical clustering algorithm research question analyzed analysis variance anova procedure pairwise comparison testsfactor analysis revised extended eheals revealed six dimensions awareness sources recognizing quality meaning understanding information perceived efficiency validating information smart net factor solution demonstrates good fit data root mean square error approximation rmsea059 developed dimension ehealse awareness different internet sources mean398 standard deviation sd061 whereas least developed understanding information mean311 sd075 clustering resulted four user types active helpseekers 483 311644 lurkers 318 205644 core relational users 169 109644 lowengaged users 3 19644 analysis research question showed statistically significant differences among user types across six dimensions ehealse notably core relational users performed worse lurkers validating information dimension p01 worse active helpseekers smart net dimension p05 active helpseekers highest scores dimensions ehealse whereas lowengaged users statistically significantly lower scores dimensions ehealse comparison groupsthose looking advice support ohcs making queries well equipped ehealth literacy skills filter potential misinformation detect bad advice however core relational users produce content ohcs lessdeveloped skills crossvalidating information obtained navigating successfully perils online world site managers monitor activity avoid spread misinformation might lead unhealthy practices