Abstract
BackgroundThe 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.ObjectiveIn 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.MethodsWe 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.ResultsIn 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).ConclusionsWe 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.
Highlights
To live a healthy life, people may pay greater attention to the information related to physical and mental health, disease, nutrition, and health protection
The research findings are of great practical value to carry out health education and health knowledge dissemination inside and outside schools according to the interests of youth, enable the innovation of information services in online health community natural language processing (NLP) (OHC), and improve the health literacy of young people
Statistical data indicated that the ratio of female to male gender distribution was about 100:116.9 in China [52]; the ratio of the number of questions raised by female to male users in our collected data was about 229.72 (n=42,136) to 100 (n=18,342), which showed that the young female users were more willing to use OHC for health consultation than were the male users
Summary
Background To live a healthy life, people may pay greater attention to the information related to physical and mental health, disease, nutrition, and health protection. Heath information can guide health and clinical behaviors [1,2], and the availability of the internet makes it convenient to retrieve health-related information [3]. 1 (page number not for citation purposes) information access make online health communities (OHCs) one of the most important sources for searching and exchanging health-related information, experiences, advice, support, and opinions [5]. The large-scale sharing of health information makes OHCs a valuable and abundant source of data for addressing public health questions [6]. User-generated content in OHCs is one of the most direct and convenient ways of learning the topics of interest for users [7]. The contents posted on online health communities (OHCs) are valuable resources to learn about youth's health information needs
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