There have already been various approaches to this, such as Lu and Yuan (2010). A possible solution would be to look at the sources on a more general level. This selection and chosen abstraction level is often driven by the context determined by the research question (e.g., Lariscy et al., 2010), which is why the range of sources is always somewhat arbitrary. Therefore, researchers are forced to consider a selection of sources or build umbrella terms with varying degrees of abstraction. Since there are countless possibilities to obtain health information, it is nearly impossible to include every existing source. In the scientific practice, however, this can be hardly implemented. One way to achieve this could be the same selection of information sources in each study. First, to generalize and contrast the results of different studies, a common basis for the objects under observation is required. While this approach undoubtedly provides meaningful insights on a micro-level, it suffers from a few shortcomings. For example, Blanch-Hartigan and Viswanath (2015) showed that higher education levels are associated with more use of the internet and support organizations as sources of health information. Various prediction models for the perception or use of specific sources have been tested (e.g., doctor, nurse, dietician, and homeopath Lawson et al., 2011 books, magazines, brochures, and newspapers Marrie et al., 2013). In this line of research, seeker characteristics, such as sociodemographic or personality variables, are at the researchers' main focus. A vast body of research exists on individuals' health information seeking behavior with regard to the preference for specific sources of health information (e.g., Dutta-Bergman, 2004 Rutten et al., 2005, for a review Pecchioni and Sparks, 2007 Smith, 2011 Dobransky and Hargittai, 2012). In today's information society, individuals are confronted with a wide range of potential information sources they can turn to ( Johnson and Case, 2012). When experiencing a health problem, a fundamental need for health information arises. This allows researchers to classify each source and with this, to draw on common ground when interpreting the varying use of health information sources. Thus, the wide array of health information sources can be structured by means of the new taxonomy arranging them on three dimensions. impersonal), and “accessibility” (low vs. professional), “interaction” (interpersonal vs. Results of non-metric multidimensional scaling suggested three basic dimensions underlying the similarity ratings: “expertise” (lay vs.
In our study, nine non-redundant sources of health information were presented to N = 150 participants who rated all 36 possible combinations of source pairs regarding their perceived similarity. The present paper complements this research by developing a taxonomy which is based on individuals' subjective perceptions of the “universe” of health information sources.
0 kommentar(er)
