eHealth Literacy and Health Information Seeking Behaviours Among People with Stroke: A Cross-Sectional Study

Research Objectives: To describe the ehealth literacy and online health information seeking behaviour in self-management of medical and emotional conditions, as well as life roles, health, and occupation, among people with stroke; and to explore the associations between demographics and ehealth literacy.

Design: A cross-sectional study.

Setting: Community

Participants: Forty community-dwelling individuals with stroke (average 68 years) were recruited. Most were male (68%), used English as their primary language (83%) and were from urban communities (78%).

Interventions: N/A

Main Outcome Measures: Quantitative survey data was collected online on participants’ sociodemographic characteristics, ehealth literacy using the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS), and online health information seeking behaviour.

Results: Most respondents (78%) used the internet to find health information, however, the level of trust for using the internet ranged between “a little” to “some” (75%). The internet was used to find information pertaining to medical management, emotional management, and life roles, health, and occupation by approximately 60%, 20%, and 15% of respondents, respectively. Respondents showed a moderate level of ehealth literacy (eHEALS score: 29 ± 7 out of 40). Significant negative correlations were found between eHEALS and age (rs = -0.362, p = 0.022). There were significant negative correlations with age in subdomains of eHEALS: (i) knowing how to use the internet (rs = -0.364, p = 0.021), (ii) knowing how to use health information from the internet (rs = -0.346, p = 0.029), (iii) having the skills to evaluate online resources (rs = -0.331, p = 0.037), and (iv) differentiating between high and low quality online HI (rs = -0.336, p = 0.034).

Conclusions: This novel study investigated ehealth literacy and health information seeking behaviour among people with stroke. Overall, individuals living with stroke recorded low to moderate trust levels with online health information, which was lower in older respondents. Further studies are warranted to determine how best to improve online resource access and support people to build confidence when using the internet to find health resources, especially for emotional management, health, life roles and occupation.

Author(s) Disclosures: None.