How college students evaluate the quality of online health information: A qualitative study

Objective: Health information is critically important for guiding health-related decision-making. This paper examines the strategies college students used to evaluate the quality of online health information. Methods: Fifteen undergraduate students at a land-grant university located in north central Oklahoma were recruited through a research participation and management tool called SONA. Data were collected with semi-structured individual interviews focused on individual experiences in retrieving health information from the internet, specifically examining how students evaluate the quality of online health information. To analyze the data, we applied a deductive approach guided by established criteria to identify the strategies respondents used to evaluate the quality of online health information. Results: We identified four primary factors influencing participants’ judgment of information quality: source-related, content-related, design-related, and individual factors. The most widely mentioned source-related factor was site owners/sponsors (e.g., website domain type and ownership of the information), which influenced their judgement of whether the information had a sufficient level of subject-related knowledge. The most commonly used content-related factor was authorship (e.g., author’s credentials and author’s previous work), which influenced participants’ judgement of whether the information can be trusted. The most used design-related factor was overall appearance as a pivotal indicator of professionalism. Prior knowledge and experience of using a source were identified as the most important individual factors for evaluating online health information. Discussion: This study expands our understanding of online health information seeking behaviors among college students and provides insights for public health organizations and professionals to disseminate high-quality information and prevent the spread of misinformation.