Perception of quality and trustworthiness of Internet resources by personal health information seekers

This paper focuses on one dimension of personal health information seeking: perception of quality and trustworthiness of information sources.

Intensive interviews were conducted using a conversational, unstructured, exploratory interview style.

Interviews were conducted at 3 publicly accessible library sites in Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada.

Thirty-eight non-experts were interviewed.

Three separate and distinct methods used to identify credible health information resources were identified. Consumers may have strong opinions about what they mistrust; use fairly rigorous evaluation protocols; or filter information based on intuition or common sense, eye appeal or an authoritative sounding sponsor or title.

Many people use a mix of rational and/or intuitive criteria to assess the health information they use.