Smartphones or computers for online sex education? A contraception information seeking model for Chinese college students

ABSTRACT

China has a conservative sex culture and does not include contraception as part of its sex education curriculum. As a result, young people tend to search for sex information online. How college students seek contraception information, by what means, and the factors affecting their information seeking are poorly understood. To better understand these issues, this study compares the Planned Risk Information-Seeking Model (PRISM) with an expanded model that incorporates device preference and differentiates between perceived severity and vulnerability. The expanded model was found to fit and explain the data better than PRISM. Results indicate that perceived vulnerability to unwanted pregnancy is related to information seeking while perceived severity is not. While perceived severity substantially influenced the affective response to unwanted pregnancy, the affective response was not related to information-seeking behaviour. Channel belief on the other hand proved to be a significant predictor of seeking contraception information online. Our findings also suggest that Chinese college students prefer using smartphones to seeking contraceptive information online. We discuss the implications of using this for providing online sex education on demand to young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Contraception
• risk perception
• online information seeking
• China
• smartphones
• college students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.