TY - JOUR

T1 - Digital health literacy, online information-seeking behaviour, and satisfaction of Covid-19 information among the university students of East and South-East Asia

AU - Nu Htay, Mila Nu

AU - Parial, Laurence Lloyd

AU - Tolabing, Ma. Carmen

AU - Dadaczynski, Kevin

AU - Okan, Orkan

AU - Man Leung, Angela Yee

AU - Su, Tin Tin

PY - 2022/4/13

Y1 - 2022/4/13

N2 - During the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing interest in online information about coronavirus worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the digital health literacy (DHL) level, information-seeking behaviour, and satisfaction of information on COVID-19 among East and South-East Asia university students. This cross-sectional web-based study was conducted between April to June 2020 by recruiting students from universities in China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. University students who have Internet access were invited to participate in the study. Items on sociodemographic variables, DHL, information-seeking behaviour, and information satisfaction were included in the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis were conducted. A total of 5302 university students responded to the survey. The overall mean score across the four DHL subscales was 2.89 (SD: 0.42). Search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo) (92.0%) and social media (88.4%) were highly utilized by the students, whereas Websites of doctors or health insurance companies were of lower utilization (64.7%). Across the domains (i.e., adding self-generated content, determining relevance, evaluating reliability, and protecting privacy) higher DHL was positively associated with higher usage of trustworthy resources. Providing online information on COVID-19 at official university websites and conducting health talks or web-based information dissemination about the strategies for mental health challenges during pandemic could be beneficial to the students. Strengthening DHL among university students will enhance their critical thinking and evaluation of online resources, which could direct them to the quality and trustworthy information sources on COVID-19.

AB - During the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing interest in online information about coronavirus worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the digital health literacy (DHL) level, information-seeking behaviour, and satisfaction of information on COVID-19 among East and South-East Asia university students. This cross-sectional web-based study was conducted between April to June 2020 by recruiting students from universities in China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. University students who have Internet access were invited to participate in the study. Items on sociodemographic variables, DHL, information-seeking behaviour, and information satisfaction were included in the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis were conducted. A total of 5302 university students responded to the survey. The overall mean score across the four DHL subscales was 2.89 (SD: 0.42). Search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo) (92.0%) and social media (88.4%) were highly utilized by the students, whereas Websites of doctors or health insurance companies were of lower utilization (64.7%). Across the domains (i.e., adding self-generated content, determining relevance, evaluating reliability, and protecting privacy) higher DHL was positively associated with higher usage of trustworthy resources. Providing online information on COVID-19 at official university websites and conducting health talks or web-based information dissemination about the strategies for mental health challenges during pandemic could be beneficial to the students. Strengthening DHL among university students will enhance their critical thinking and evaluation of online resources, which could direct them to the quality and trustworthy information sources on COVID-19.

KW - Health sciences

KW - COVID-19/epidemiology

KW - China

KW - Cross-Sectional Studies

KW - Health Literacy

KW - Humans

KW - Information Seeking Behavior

KW - Pandemics

KW - Personal Satisfaction

KW - Reproducibility of Results

KW - Students

KW - Surveys and Questionnaires

KW - Universities

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128114896&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/86a24e9b-28bf-3ac0-8874-573abc0ce76d/

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0266276

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0266276

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 35417478

AN - SCOPUS:85128114896

VL - 17

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 4

M1 - e0266276

ER -