Who is Using the Web for Science and Health Information?

Abstract

This analysis (1) reviews the growth of public access to computers and the Web in recent years, (2) identifies those individuals from a national sample of adults who have sought specific information from the Web, (3) identifies those individuals who have attempted to find science or health information on the Web, and (4) constructs two simple models to predict seeking scientific and health information from the Web. The analysis concludes that the growth of access to the Web is likely to continue and that slightly more than 20 percent of American adults sought health or science information from the Web in 1999. A pair of path models found that civic scientific literacy and formal education were the strongest predictors of seeking science information on the Web, and that biomedical literacy and formal education were the strongest predictors of seeking health information on the Web.