Understanding the Patient Health Information Behavior to Guide Their Health Self-management: Findings from Online Lupus Erythematosus Communities

Authors

Mengqing Yang, School of information management, Nanjing UniversityFollow
Xiaoting Xu, School of information management, Nanjing UniversityFollow

Abstract

Online health communities(OHCs)have the potential to empower individualsto develop healthy lifestyles, make better and more informed medical decisions, and improve personal health management. However the relationship between users'health information behavior in OHCs and their health self-management needs further discussion.Our study classifiedOHCsusers into three groups: Positive, Intermediate and Negativeby clustering methodaccording to their health information communication. The clustering results showed that there weresignificant differences in thelevel of health information exchange among users.The results of one-way ANOVA with Games-Howell test showed that there were also significant differences in the health status, perceived help from OHCsand health self-management among the three groups.And there wasa significant correlation betweenperceived help from OHCs and users’health self-management.Feasible guidancewas proposed for stakeholders to improve OHCs’function to help patients with chronic diseases to improve their health.

Recommended Citation

Yang, Mengqing and Xu, Xiaoting, "Understanding the Patient Health Information Behavior to Guide Their Health Self-management: Findings from Online Lupus Erythematosus Communities" (2019). PACIS 2019 Proceedings. 35.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2019/35