Socio-demographic characteristics affect health information seeking on the Internet in Turkey

The objective of this paper was to determine the effects of certain socio-demographic characteristics of Turkish individuals who seek health information on the Internet.

This study was granted permission to use data obtained by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) in 2018 under their Household Information Technology Use (HITU) study. The original sample for this research comprised 19,389 participants.

Age, gender, educational level, place of residence and frequency of Internet use were all found to impact the participants' health information seeking behaviour on the Internet. Health information was sought more frequently by women than men, by younger than older people and by those with higher levels of education. Also, health information searches were conducted more often in developed regions than in less-developed regions. In addition, it was also found that the habit of seeking health information was more common among those who use the Internet more frequently.

Several socio-demographic characteristics of individuals affect their health information seeking behaviour on the Internet. All individuals should be granted equivalent access to reliable health information by taking sociodemographic characteristics and discrepancies into consideration.