AlMuammar Sarah A, Noorsaeed Afnan S, Alafif Raghad A, Kamal Yumna F, Daghistani Ghaida M
Family Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, SAU.
Medicine and Surgery, King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Medicine, Jeddah, SAU.
Cureus. 2021 Sep 27;13(9):e18338. doi: 10.7759/cureus.18338. eCollection 2021 Sep.
The Internet is being increasingly used in our lives. Along with Internet use, social media sites are especially popular and are used by many people on a daily basis.Many studies were conducted to see the people's perception and their attitude towards the use of the Internet for health information. Such studies were also carried out in Saudi Arabia, but most have been limited to a specific target sample of the population. Our study aimed to assess the perception towards and use of different platforms and search engines to seek health information in Saudi Arabia.
A cross-sectional study was conducted in Saudi Arabia during the year 2021. An Arabic online questionnaire using Google forms was sent to a randomized sample. Microsoft Excel 2016 was used for data entry, and statistical analysis was performed using IBM© SPSS© Statistics version 25 (IBM© Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).
Among the 1363 participants, 56.2% were females and 43.8% were males with a mean age of 30.73 ± 12.3. The majority were living in Western region. The most used social media platforms were WhatsApp (91.5%), YouTube (84.6%), and Twitter (82.6%), respectively. The most common medical websites browsed were the Saudi Ministry of Health (67%) and the Food and Drug Administration (54.4%). Some 40.1% of the participants had a medical consultation online from a doctor, and most of them (67.8%) trusted the online physician. Finally, most of the participants (90.9%) thought that health information on the Internet or social media contributes to raising the level of health awareness among the general population. There was a significant relationship between educational level and gender and online health-seeking behavior (p > 0.05).
The study reinforced that health information that is sought from the Internet and social media platforms has a great impact on the population, emphasizing the need for credible information sources and how to access them.
互联网在我们的生活中使用得越来越频繁。随着互联网的使用，社交媒体网站尤其受欢迎，许多人每天都在使用。许多研究旨在了解人们对利用互联网获取健康信息的认知和态度。沙特阿拉伯也进行了此类研究，但大多数研究仅限于特定的目标人群样本。我们的研究旨在评估沙特阿拉伯人对不同平台和搜索引擎获取健康信息的认知和使用情况。
2021年在沙特阿拉伯进行了一项横断面研究。通过谷歌表单发送了一份阿拉伯语在线问卷给一个随机样本。使用Microsoft Excel 2016进行数据录入，并使用IBM© SPSS© Statistics版本25（IBM©公司，美国纽约州阿蒙克）进行统计分析。
在1363名参与者中，56.2%为女性，43.8%为男性，平均年龄为30.73±12.3岁。大多数人生活在西部地区。使用最多的社交媒体平台分别是WhatsApp（91.5%）、YouTube（84.6%）和Twitter（82.6%）。浏览最多的医学网站是沙特卫生部网站（67%）和食品药品管理局网站（54.4%）。约40.1%的参与者在线咨询过医生，其中大多数人（67.8%）信任在线医生。最后，大多数参与者（90.9%）认为互联网或社交媒体上的健康信息有助于提高普通人群的健康意识水平。教育程度、性别与在线寻求健康行为之间存在显著关系（p>0.05）。
该研究强化了从互联网和社交媒体平台获取的健康信息对人群有重大影响，强调了可靠信息来源的必要性以及如何获取这些来源。
