Abstract
BackgroundMany patients use websites, blogs, or online social communities to gain health knowledge, information about disease symptoms, and disease diagnosis opinions. The purpose of this study is to use the online platform of blogs to explore whether the framing effect of information content, situated learning of information content, and health knowledge involvement would affect health communication between doctors and patients and further explore whether this would increase patient willingness to seek treatment.MethodsThis study uses a survey to collect data from patient subjects who have used online doctor blogs or patients who have discussed medical information with doctors on blogs. The number of valid questionnaire samples is 278, and partial least square is used to conduct structural equation model analysis.ResultsResearch results show that situated learning and health knowledge involvement have a positive effect on health communication. The negative framing effect and health knowledge involvement would also affect the patient’s intention to seek medical help. In addition, situated learning and health knowledge involvement would affect the intention to seek medical help through communication factors.ConclusionsBlogs are important communication channels between medical personnel and patients that allow users to consult and ask questions without time limitations and enable them to obtain comprehensive health information.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1742-4755-11-93) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Health communication studies showed that the most effective health communication is customized health communication [1]
The purpose of this study is to use the online platform of blogs to explore whether the framing effects, situated learning of information content, and health knowledge involvement would affect health communication and to further study whether this exploration would elevate the patient’s intention to seek medical treatment
People would have a better understanding of medical information if they have a higher level of health knowledge, and their willingness to seek medical attention would increase
Summary
Health communication studies showed that the most effective health communication is customized health communication [1]. Blogs, or online social communities to gain health knowledge, information about disease symptoms, and disease diagnosis opinions [2]. Framing effects indicate that the presentation of information will affect consumer choices. A previous study has noted that different information framing would affect people’s behaviors toward disease prevention [8]. Blogs, or online social communities to gain health knowledge, information about disease symptoms, and disease diagnosis opinions. The purpose of this study is to use the online platform of blogs to explore whether the framing effect of information content, situated learning of information content, and health knowledge involvement would affect health communication between doctors and patients and further explore whether this would increase patient willingness to seek treatment
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