Vaccine information seeking on social Q&A services.

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Communication Studies
• Information Science

Background:

• Vaccine misinformation is a growing concern, contributing to vaccine hesitancy.
• Limited research exists on how individuals seek and evaluate online vaccine information.
• Understanding online information-seeking behaviors is crucial for public health interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how vaccine-hesitant parents seek and evaluate online vaccine information.
• To identify factors influencing the perceived trustworthiness of online vaccine information.
• To test the hypothesis that parents prefer trustworthy sources based on competence, integrity, and benevolence.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 4910 questions and 2583 answers from Yahoo! Answers and a Facebook group.
• Examination of question topics, explicit targeting of professionals/parents, and answer features predicting quality.
• Online experiment to assess the impact of respondent identity and stance on trustworthiness.

Main Results:

• Question topics varied by platform (risks/benefits vs. schedules).
• Most questions did not specify desired answer source (professional vs. parent).
• Health professional answers were twice as likely to be chosen as 'best' on Yahoo! Answers, regardless of stance.
• Online experiment showed respondent identity and stance influenced perceived trustworthiness.

Conclusions:

• Despite misinformation, trust in mainstream science and medicine appears robust.
• Online expert outreach may be an effective strategy to address vaccine hesitancy.
• Further research should explore platform-specific information-seeking behaviors and trust factors.