Understanding young singaporeans gathering and credibility assessments of online sexual health information 2

Appendix 2.1: Blurbs of 2001 to 2010 studies related to young people, Singapore, sexual health and/or Internet The purpose of this study was to determine how college students search for

Appendices

Appendix 1.1: Overview of Singapore Education Landscape (MOE, 2009)

Appendix 1.2: Figures and tables extracted from IDA Annual Survey on Infocomm usage in households and by individuals

1.2a: Access to computer at any location (2007)1

1.2b: Usage of Computer over 12 months by age (2007)2

1.2c: Internet activities engaged by users from the various age groups (2007)3

1.2d: Use of Portable Equipment4

Appendix 2.1: Blurbs of 2001 to 2010 studies related to young people, Singapore, sexual health and/or Internet

The purpose of this study was

to determine how college students search for online sexual health information and whether they retrieve accurate answers to sexual health questions

In fall 2007, 34 first-year, first-semester undergraduates participated in an observational research study, using Camtasia Studio Most students found accurate answers to the 12 sexual health questions posed Finding local information and resources online proved more difficult than finding answers to general sexual health questions

Based on their findings, the authors argue that young people must be educated about how Web search engine results are prioritized/ displayed and trained to evaluate Web sites for reliable information

Information seeking Internet Health information Sexual health

The study sample consisted of 86 undergraduate students recruited from Communication courses at a large Southwestern university Participants’ ages ranged between 19 and 32 years Sixty-three (73.3%) of the participants were female and 22 (25.6%) were male A 2 x

2 between-participants design was used in this study Web-use orientation (searching/surfing) and the health topic (smoking cessation/Type I diabetes) were the independent variables The health topic was manipulated in this study in order mitigate the possibility of fixed-message effects and increase the external validity of the study The participants met in a computer lab and were informed that they would be completing an information-seeking task and a questionnaire Participants were randomly assigned to one

of the four experimental conditions: searching for smoking cessation information (n = 21), surfing about smoking cessation information (n = 22), searching for diabetes information (n

= 19), surfing about diabetes (n = 24)

The results showed a positive relationship between the presence of structural features and perceptions of website credibility as well as a positive relationship between the presence of message characteristics and attitudes about the health topic Although Web-use orientation moderated the relationship between message characteristics and perceptions of website credibility, the nature of this relationship was inconsistent with study predictions

Web credibility Information-seeking Internet Health website

No Author(s), Year Study Objectives/

23 students from two secondary school participated in this study All students (8 boys and

15 girls; mean age 14.22, SD 0.422) were in the 9th grade of secondary education (Dutch:

VWO, 6 year program) Students solved two information problems while thinking aloud

After completing the tasks, they were interviewed in groups on their use of criteria

Results showed that students did not evaluate results, source and information very often

The criteria students mentioned when asked which criteria were important for evaluating information were not always the same criteria they mentioned while solving the information problems They mentioned more criteria but also admitted not always using these criteria while searching the Web

Information problem solving Internet

Differences between students

on vocational and academic study programmes were also investigated

A questionnaire consisting of 87 multiple choice questions was distributed to 253 male students attending three upper secondary schools in a single Swedish county During the spring of 2007, 252 young male students (*18 years old), from the third year of three upper secondary schools were invited to participate in the study The response rate was 76% and respondents were equally distributed between two groups: academic students (n=97), and vocational students (n=95) They were in the final stages of the programme, only two months ahead of graduation

A study-specific questionnaire, containing 87 multiple-choice questions investigated participants’ behaviour, knowledge, attitudes, and needs related to sexual and reproductive health Two-thirds of the questions had been used in a large national survey in 1996 One-third of the questions were constructed specifically for this study The respondents were not asked for their sexual orientation but in the missive and in the questionnaire, it was explicitly stated that the questions were directed at everyone: heterosexual, bisexual and

homosexual, experienced and inexperienced Questions about intercourse were defined as either vaginal or/and anal All questions, except for the one on ECPs, were relevant to everyone regardless of sexual orientation

The principals of each school were informed about the study and they approved the questionnaire The principals and the class teacher received a missive containing all information about the study All participants received an enhanced missive, informing them about the aim of the study and the fact that participation was anonymous and voluntary The questionnaires were distributed during regular lessons, by the first author or by the class teacher, and took between 20 and 40 minutes to complete This study confirmed previous findings that vocational students have a higher risk lifestyle than those in academic programme Vocational students reported more tobacco use, had an earlier sexual debut, more sexual partners, and more frequent unprotected sex at the first date School and

Sexual health

friends were the two most reported sources of knowledge about sexuality, but some young males over estimated their own knowledge The respondents wanted more information about female and male anatomy and physiology, STIs, and relations Contemporary Swedish studies, including this one, have identified more liberal attitudes in sexual matters than earlier surveys1,2 These liberal attitudes are probably contributing to the rising number of CT infections and unplanned pregnancies

One hundred and thirty-six of the 192 respondents (71%) reported experience of sexual intercourse The median age at first intercourse among these students was 17 years (Table 1) However, the vocational students had had their sexual debut at a younger age than those in academic study programmes

The main sources of the students’ knowledge of sexual and reproductive matters were the secondary school (grades 6–9) and friends, in that order (Table 2) No one reported upper secondary school as the main source of knowledge Only 3% of the academic students and 7% of the vocational students considered that the Internet was their main source of sexual and reproductive knowledge

Two thirds (66%) of the respondents considered they had sufficient knowledge of sexual and reproductive health matters More academic students (79%) than those in vocational programmes (59%) had sometimes felt a need to talk to someone about their own sexuality, with the aim of getting advice and counselling

A telephone survey was conducted using a sample of listed households of 18- to year-olds compiled from more than 3,200 original public and private sources including white pages and census information The survey was conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviewing to reduce interview length and minimize recording errors

26-Findings suggested that those with higher levels of education and of a more rich background used the Web for more “capital enhancing” activities Detailed analyses of user attributes also revealed that online skill was an important mediating factor in the types of activities people pursued online

resource-skill self-perceived knowledge Internet; Web use

online behaviour young adults

No Author(s), Year Study Objectives/

Research Questions

Respondents, Research Methods & Results Related

Topics

6 Rains (2008) To test the preceding model, data

were collected using a questionnaire posted on a secure website

Students in a communication course at a large Southwestern

Hypothesized Model of Internet Self-Efficacy as a Partial Mediator of One’s Motivation

to be Involved in One’s Health and Experience using the Web and Information Seeking Processes and Outcomes

University were given extra-credit for soliciting respondents who were (a) at least 18 years of age, (b) not a student nor an employee of the university, and who (c) had used the Internet=Web during the previous 6 months to acquire health information Students were sent a form e-mail message explaining the study and asked to forward it to potential respondents The form e-mail message contained a link directing respondents

to the study website A total of 157 respondents completed the questionnaire

Web information seeking

This paper reports on a study of

emails written in to Teenage Health Freak, a UK-based website

concerned with health issues for young people

seeking online health advice The aims of this study were to investigate concerns and difficulties relating to communication among adolescents

It is widely known that barriers exist in communication between adolescents and health professionals However, little is known about the actual language used by young people articulating such difficulties and whether email might allow them to overcome these problems

The study design was a corpus linguistic analysis of a million-word adolescent health email database based on 62 794 emails from young people requesting health advice from

a prominent UK-hosted and doctor-led website

Results show that young people reported various concerns about their health They described numerous difficulties in disclosing such concerns to other people, in particular to parents and doctors However, they readily expressed their concerns by email, displaying elevated levels of directness, particularly in relation to potentially sensitive or embarrassing topics

Email has the potential to facilitate and supplement face-to-face consultations with health professionals Increased adoption of email by health providers may be an efficient means of engaging with a generation often reluctant to access more traditional health care services and thus encourage them to enter the primary care setting more readily

Health Internet

RQ2: What is the relation between self-reported and observed information verification behaviours?

574 individuals participated in the study Of the participants 39 percent were male and

61 percent were female The range of participant ages was 18 to 83 years, with a mean age of 31.99 years

This study used a 4 x 2 experimental design that varied the genre of website (news organization, e-commerce, special interest, or personal sites) with verity of the site (a fictional or real site) to test the hypotheses and research questions The dependent variables were the three types of credibility perceptions

The results show that perceptions of credibility differed, such that news organization websites were rated highest and personal websites lowest, in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, with e-commerce and special interest sites rated between these

The results also indicated that credibility assessments appear to be primarily due to website attributes (e.g design features, depth of content, site complexity) rather than to familiarity with website sponsors

Finally, there was a negative relationship between self-reported and observed information verification behaviour and a positive relationship between self-reported verification and internet/web experience

Credibility Information verification Internet

do not, look for health information?

RQ2 Is the Web making it easier to find information?

RQ3 How do women who use the Web, as compared with those who

do not, use the health information they find?

RQ4 Are Web users more aware

of health information resources?

Based on previously collected data, this article represents an extension of the earlier analysis with its focus on women who, at least to some extent, seek health care information via The Web (herein, Web user), a topic not thoroughly addressed in the earlier study

A comparison of female Web users and non-Web users who seek health information revealed that Web users sought health information at a higher rate than non-Web users Web users were more likely to communicate with medical professionals about the health information found and claimed that their decisions about health treatments were influenced by the health information In most cases, Web users expressed a higher awareness of resources, regardless of format Web users did not report that finding health information, from any channel, however, was noticeably easier

Health information Internet

Sexual Health Internet

157 English-speaking adolescents (aged 11- 19) in diverse geographical and socioeconomic settings in UK secondary schools and US middle / high schools

Qualitative: A series of 26 single gender focus groups - discussions were recorded on audiotape and transcribed

Focus group discussions included perceptions of how the Internet had changed participants’ leisure/work activities and experiences, and perceptions of how the Internet could be use to find health information

A short Internet exercise was undertaken in 20 of the 26 groups Each group was asked to choose a health-related topic and search for information on the Internet

Many students cited difficulties in accessing health information online

Functional health literacy challenges included, for example, spelling medical terms correctly and being able to construct questions describing symptoms accurately Critical challenges included discerning relevance of information retrieved by search engines and knowing which sites to trust Interactive challenges included the appropriate application of health information to address personal health concerns within their local neighbourhood

Health Internet Information-seeking Literacy Credibility

12 Sun, Unger,

et al (2005)

Research studies how Internet accessibility and usage are related to demographic, psychosocial, behavioural, and other health related

characteristics

2373 7th grade students of various ethnic groups in Southern California Cross-sectional survey Logistic regressions were conducted to assess the associations between Internet users with selected demographic,

psychosocial, behavioural variables and self-reported health statuses

Nearly all (99%) of the respondents could access the Internet either at school

or at home Higher SES and Asian ethnicity were associated with higher

Internet

internet use Among those who could access the Internet and after adjusting for the selected demographic and psychosocial variables, depression was positively related with chat-room use and using the Internet longer than 1 hour per day at home, and hostility was positively related with Internet favouring (All ORs = 1.2 for +1 STD, p < 0.05) Less parental monitoring and more unsupervised time were positively related to email use, chat-room use, and at home Internet use (ORs for +1 STD ranged from 1.2 to 2.0, all p <

0.05), but not related to at school Internet use

seeking on the Web, including:

1 Identify the proportion of sexually-related queries

2 Compare the characteristics of sexual queries submitted by Alta Vista and AlltheWeb.com users

Qualitatively analyzed queries from logs of 1,025,910 Alta Vista and AlltheWeb.com Web user queries from 2001 Compared the differences in sexually-related Web searching between Alta Vista and AlltheWeb.com users

Data showed a slightly higher percentage of searches for sexual material by the EuropeanAlltheWeb.com users Alta Vista users submitted more terms per sexually-related query, but submitted fewer queries per session than the AlltheWeb.com users In both AlltheWeb.com and Alta Vista sexually-related queries, the term “sex” was the most frequently occurring term, but shared many of the most frequently used terms, but with a different percentage of use

characteristics of sexual and non-sexual queries

It examined the characteristics of sexually related queries, including visual images or textual descriptions of sexual behaviour

Qualitative: Study analyzed 58,027 queries from a log of 1,025,910 Excite Web user queries from 1999

Findings show that sexual and non-sexual-related queries exhibited differences in session duration, query outcomes, and search term choices

Sexual Health Internet

• To understand their own practices as teachers

in online classrooms

• To design, evaluate and iteratively refine the curriculum for exploratory learning, through drawing based on research conducted

Three cohorts of first year University of Cape Town engineering students from previously disadvantaged schooling backgrounds

Qualitative: online discussions, end of-term interviews, course evaluations, participatory evaluations, student assignments, web-searching case studies, and web searching exercises

At the start of the course, students provided with ‘canned searches’ or

pre-Internet Information-Seeking Literacy

planned detective-hunts for information Students are required to interpret the search results and make selections

Prior tests were conducted on these searches using a range of keywords which will eventually present students with pre-formulated queries that will lead them to at least one useful source

(a) Individuals would increase their active information seeking, for example, by an increased use of search engines;

(b) There would be increasing commonality among individuals in the selection of Web sites as more useful sites are revisited and less useful sites ignored

206 students drawn from the general population of students at a Higher Education institution in the UK

Quantitative: Data analysis combined the technique of Web transaction log analysis with the conditional regression model of longitudinal analysis using a split-half technique

The study took place in the “real world” context of the user’s Web information seeking Information tasks were constructed by the users and reflected the users’ own particular information needs

Internet Information-Seeking Literacy

18 Gordon

(2002)

How did tenth-grade biology students who learnt and used concept mapping in the classroom for seven months search for information in the context of a library research assignment?

(a) How did student mappers and nonmappers search for information in the context of the same library research assignment?

10 tenth grade students at a private American school in Europe

Quantitative: Bayesian statistics and Fano method from information theory were used to triangulate the qualitative data

Qualitative: Audio-taped think-aloud search sessions followed by structured interviews Stimulated recall was used as an interview method, key

Internet Information-Seeking Literacy

(b) How did concept formation influence search strategies and relate to developing search strategies?

(c) How did expert searches of the librarian and teacher compare with each other and with the searching of mappers and nonmappers?

(d) How did student searching relate to stages of Kuhlthau (1993) Information Search Process?

informants were provided with written transcriptions of their think-aloud sessions Participant maintained journals

Respondent searched print and electronic sources for the purpose of completing a research assignment as part of the school’s biology curriculum

• To explore if high school students who spanned a range of academic abilities (a) differ in their knowledge about the Web; and (b) differ in how they search for and use information

• Hypothesis 1: There is a relationship between academic placement and a student’s general knowledge and use of the Web

• Hypothesis 2: There is a relationship between academic placement and a student’s Web searching skills

136 students (40 technical students, 52 college preparatory students, and 44 honors students) across seven sections of tenth-grade language arts classes

Quantitative: The major research hypotheses addressed in this study focused

on two dependent variable sets, general knowledge (GK) and search knowledge (SK), and their relationship to academic track (the independent variable) Multivariate analysis of variance tests were conducted to determine whether students in the three academic groups varied significantly from one another on the GK and SK dependent variable sets

Qualitative: Search protocol

A search protocol of four hierarchically arranged search tasks was developed for the qualitative portion of this study

Internet Information- Seeking Literacy

a possibility for false information, thereby potentially leading ill people away from proper care One way to begin addressing this problem is

to assess perceptions of credibility about information found online

A total of 125 students from two introductory communication courses at a large midwestern university were used to conduct a between-groups, 2 (message type) x 3 (source type) factorial design experiment Participants were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions Upon assignment, participants were instructed to assess a health-related Web site they were told was pre-selected from the Internet earlier that day.(Appendix A) They were then instructed this information would be used to write a report for class

While students are considered convenient and non-representative, such a sample for this project was useful as it represents the largest population of Internet users However, it should be noted that the largest group of online

Internet Credibility Information online