Department of Environmental Health, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Aug 20;17(17):6053. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17176053.
In today's digitalized world, most parents are Internet-savvy and use online sources for child health information, mainly due to the 24/7 availability of advice. However, parents are often not specifically trained to identify reliable, evidence-based sources of information. In this cross-sectional online survey among a purposive, non-probabilistic sample of Austrian parents ( = 90, 81.1% females), we assessed aspects of health app use and family policy benefits-related and scenario-based Internet seeking behavior. We found that the surveyed parents showed a high health app use. The participants indicated that they prefer online information seeking to any other option in a scenario describing that their child would be sick at after-work hours, with social media channels being the least preferred source of online information. Mothers and younger parents were more likely to retrieve online information on family policy benefits. With the smartphone in everybody's pocket, parents seemed to rely on mobile and online content when searching for child health information. Pediatricians are best suited to decide what treatment fits the child or their current medical condition, but nowadays they face increasing numbers of pre-informed parents seeking health information online. Provision of targeted parental education and guidance through the online information jungle could effectively empower parents and smooth personal and digital contacts in the delicate doctor-parent-child triangle.
在当今数字化的世界中，大多数父母都精通互联网，他们主要会利用在线资源获取儿童健康信息，因为这些资源可以随时提供建议。然而，父母通常没有接受过专门的培训，无法识别可靠的、基于证据的信息来源。在这项针对奥地利父母（=90，81.1%为女性）的特定、非概率样本的横断面在线调查中，我们评估了健康应用程序使用以及与家庭政策利益相关的方面和基于场景的互联网搜索行为。我们发现，接受调查的父母表现出了较高的健康应用程序使用度。参与者表示，在描述孩子在下班后生病的场景中，他们更愿意选择在线信息搜索，而不是其他任何选择，社交媒体渠道是他们最不喜欢的在线信息来源。母亲和年轻的父母更有可能检索家庭政策利益相关的在线信息。随着智能手机普及到每个人的口袋中，父母在搜索儿童健康信息时似乎依赖于移动和在线内容。儿科医生最适合根据孩子或他们当前的身体状况来决定治疗方案，但现在他们面临着越来越多的事先知情的父母在网上搜索健康信息。通过在线信息丛林为父母提供有针对性的教育和指导，可以有效地增强父母的能力，并在微妙的医生-父母-孩子三角关系中促进个人和数字联系。
