Patterns of online health information seeking after visiting a physician: perceptions of adolescents from high schools in central Belgrade, Serbia

Developing an Educational Resource Aimed at Improving Adolescent Digital Health Literacy: Using Co-Design as Research Methodology

BACKGROUND

Adolescence is a key developmental period that affects lifelong health and is impacted by adolescents regularly engaging with digital health information. Adolescents need digital health literacy (DHL) to effectively evaluate the quality and credibility of such information, and to navigate an increasingly complex digital health environment. Few educational resources exist to improve DHL, and few have involved adolescents during design. The co-design approach may hold utility through developing interventions with participants as design partners.

OBJECTIVE

This project aimed to explore the co-design approach in developing an educational resource to improve adolescents' DHL.

METHODS

Adolescents (12-17 years old) attended 4 interactive co-design workshops (June 2021-April 2022). Participant perspectives were gathered on DHL and the design of educational resources to improve it. Data generated were analyzed through content analysis to inform educational resource development.

RESULTS

In total, 27 participants from diverse backgrounds attended the workshops. Insight was gained into participants' relationship with digital health information, including acceptance of its benefits and relevance, coupled with awareness of misinformation issues, revealing areas of DHL need. Participants provided suggestions for educational resource development that incorporated the most useful aspects of digital formats to develop skills across these domains. The following 4 themes were derived from participant perspectives: ease of access to digital health information, personal and social factors that impacted use, impacts of the plethora of digital information, and anonymity offered by digital sources. Initial participant evaluation of the developed educational resource was largely positive, including useful suggestions for improvement.

CONCLUSIONS

Co-design elicited and translated authentic adolescent perspectives and design ideas into a functional educational resource. Insight into adolescents' DHL needs generated targeted educational resource content, with engaging formats, designs, and storylines. Co-design holds promise as an important and empowering tool for developing interventions to improve adolescents' DHL.

Nomophobia and eHealth literacy among adolescents: A cross-sectional study

PURPOSE

This study was conducted to determine adolescents' nomophobia behaviors, eHealth literacy levels, and their predictive factors.

DESIGN AND METHODS

A cross-sectional design was used. The population consisted of ninth, 10th, and 11th-grade adolescents (aged 14-17) in a high school in Turkiye (N = 1013). The study was completed with 719 voluntary adolescents. A questionnaire, the eHealth Literacy Scale, and the Nomophobia Questionnaire were used to collect data. Multiple linear regression was run for data analysis.

RESULTS

Of the adolescents, 44.9% were found to have moderate, and 14.8% had severe nomophobia behaviors. Adolescents who were girls, the ninth and 10th graders, who used smartphone two hours or more daily, social media users, who watched videos on the smartphone and surfed on the Internet had higher nomophobia behaviors. Adolescents who were boys, who searched for health information online, found health information on the Internet helpful, and found accessing health resources on the Internet important had higher eHealth literacy levels.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents should be educated about rational smartphone and Internet usage to comprehend the accuracy of health-related information.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

School nurses could design activities to increase eHealth literacy to encourage adolescents. Nurses could help proactively prepare nomophobia severity map and an eHealth literacy enhancement curriculum for adolescents to form functional preventive interventions. Nurse leaders can contribute to developing policies and strategies to prevent nomophobia behaviors among adolescents.

Factors affecting perception of Indian adolescent students toward interactive online mental health information during COVID-19

Purpose

This study aims to identify the critical factors affecting the perception of adolescent students toward interactive online mental health information available on health-related websites.

Design/methodology/approach

The primary data was collected with the help of an online self–structured questionnaire. The questionnaire includes the identified variables extracted from previous literature related to the mental health information websites using the Likert scale. The respondents include the adolescent school students belonging to the northern region of India: semi-urban/rural locations of Uttar Pradesh (Agra and Mathura) and urban cities (Faridabad, Gaziabad, Delhi and NCR). The criteria for selecting respondents were that students must have visited any online health information-related websites at least once. Exploratory factor analysis was used to explore the factors with the help of SPSS.20.

Findings

The identified factors that include information delivery medium/mode, websites’ navigation structure, customized information or content, ability to form a virtual relationship and supplementary features of the websites may benefit the health communication system of any country and the health-care industry.

Research limitations/implications

There are some limitations such as a limited number of respondents and even on that sample was taken for teenagers; thereby creating fewer generalizations related to the present context. Further, only exploratory factor analysis is applied in the study to identify the factors but future researchers may proceed to develop the conceptual model of perception toward online information with the help of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques.

Practical implications

The results of this study are useful for government officials especially those related to the ministry of health care and public health organizations of various countries, who usually invest in co-designing authentic, reliable and high interactive online information-sharing websites.

Social implications

The results of the study will facilitate the various social child welfare associations and non-governmental organizations that are usually involved in the holistic development of adolescents. The identified factors can be seriously taken into considerations by these associations while they are formulating any on line websites for sharing health-related information to adolescents.

Originality/value

The study is unique as it provides insight into the opinion of the adolescent students, primarily upon encountering the online mental health information concerning the Indian perspective. Future researchers, health-care policymakers and health-care professionals may use the study to capture a complete picture of a relevant phenomenon in their work.