Disaster-Related Digital Technology Engagement and Preparedness Beliefs Among Primary Care Attendees: A Health Belief...

Background/Objectives: Disaster preparedness is central to public health resilience. This study examined the association between disaster-related digital technology engagement and Health Belief Model-based preparedness beliefs among adults attending a primary care clinic in Türkiye. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 538 participants completed a sociodemographic form, a researcher-developed 10-item Disaster and Technology Use Questionnaire, and the 31-item General Disaster Preparedness Belief Scale. The technology questionnaire used five-point Likert-type response categories and was treated as a multidomain questionnaire; its prespecified equal-weighted sum formed an operational composite index rather than a unidimensional scale score. Supplementary internal-structure analyses described item covariance and clustering. Spearman correlations, false-discovery-rate correction, and hierarchical multiple linear regression with HC3 robust standard errors were used, adjusting for age, gender, education, income, marital status, and occupation. Results: The technology composite showed α = 0.793 and ω = 0.799, and exploratory and confirmatory analyses identified two correlated empirical item domains with adequate model fit (CFI = 0.952, TLI = 0.936, RMSEA = 0.055). Technology engagement was independently associated with total preparedness beliefs (B = 0.888, 95% CI 0.672-1.103; standardized β = 0.397; p < 0.001) and increased explained variance by 13.3% beyond sociodemographic factors. Adjusted associations remained significant for perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits, perceived low barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy, but not for perceived severity. Conclusions: Greater disaster-related digital technology engagement was associated with stronger preparedness beliefs, but causal direction cannot be inferred. Primary care initiatives may promote official alert tools, practical application use, and digital-information literacy while maintaining non-digital alternatives for people with limited digital access.