Wang Jie, Wang Xin, Wang Lei, Peng Yan
School of Management, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
State key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China.
JMIR Med Inform. 2021 Nov 8;9(11):e30356. doi: 10.2196/30356.
The internet has been widely accessible and well accepted by young people; however, there is a limited understanding of the internet usage patterns and characteristics on issues related to health problems. The contents posted on online health communities (OHCs) are valuable resources to learn about youth's health information needs.
In this study, we concurrently exploited statistical analysis and topic analysis of online health information needs to explore the distribution, impact factors, and topics of interest relevant to Chinese young people.
We collected 60,478 health-related data sets posted by young people from a well-known Chinese OHC named xywy.com. Descriptive statistical analysis and correlation analysis were applied to find the distribution and influence factors of the information needs of Chinese young people. Furthermore, a general 4-step topic mining strategy was presented for sparse short texts, which included sentence vectorization, dimension reduction, clustering, and keyword generation.
In the Chinese OHC, Chinese young people had a high demand for information in the areas of gynecology and obstetrics, internal medicine, dermatology, plastic surgery, and surgery, and they focused on topics such as treatment, symptoms, causes, pathology, and diet. Females accounted for 69.67% (42,136/60,478) and young adults accounted for 87.44% (52,882/60,478) of all data. Gender, age, and disease type all had a significant effect on young people's information needs and topic preferences (P<.001).
We conducted comprehensive analyses to discover the online health information needs of Chinese young people. The research findings are of great practical value to carry out health education and health knowledge dissemination inside and outside of schools according to the interests of youth, enable the innovation of information services in OHCs, and improve the health literacy of young people.
互联网已被年轻人广泛使用并欣然接受；然而，对于与健康问题相关的互联网使用模式和特征，人们的了解有限。在线健康社区（OHC）上发布的内容是了解青少年健康信息需求的宝贵资源。
在本研究中，我们同时运用统计分析和在线健康信息需求的主题分析，以探索与中国年轻人相关的信息分布、影响因素及感兴趣的主题。
我们从知名的中国在线健康社区xywy.com收集了60478条由年轻人发布的与健康相关的数据集。应用描述性统计分析和相关性分析来找出中国年轻人信息需求的分布和影响因素。此外，针对稀疏短文本提出了一种通用的四步主题挖掘策略，包括句子向量化、降维、聚类和关键词生成。
在中国的在线健康社区中，中国年轻人对妇产科、内科、皮肤科、整形手术和外科领域的信息有较高需求，他们关注治疗、症状、病因、病理和饮食等主题。女性占所有数据的69.67%（42136/60478），年轻人占87.44%（52882/60478）。性别、年龄和疾病类型对年轻人的信息需求和主题偏好均有显著影响（P<0.001）。
我们进行了全面分析以发现中国年轻人的在线健康信息需求。研究结果对于根据青少年的兴趣在学校内外开展健康教育和健康知识传播、推动在线健康社区信息服务创新以及提高年轻人的健康素养具有重要的实践价值。
