Use of and trust in health information on the Internet: A nationwide eight-year follow-up survey

Abstract

Already in its infancy, the World Wide Web was predicted to be a prime tool to promote healthier behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to compare the use of and trust in health information on the Internet during two points of time, 2001 and 2009. The target group of the study is the Finnish population aged 18–65 years. The empirical material is based on two similar postal surveys. Over the period, growth in Internet use was rapid. The results also show a huge growth in use of and trust in health information on the Internet. But still, the e-Health visions evoked in the late 1990s are far from fulfilled, since too many people seem not to seek or obtain health information from the Internet at all. Furthermore, still in 2009, approximately one-third of the respondents had no conception (‘do not know’) about the online health information reliability, due to the fact that they had used it too rarely or not at all.

Keywords:

• Consumer health information
• Internet
• Finland
• population
• comparative study

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Academy of Finland.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflict of interest