TY - JOUR
T1 - Health information needs of young Chinese people based on an online health community
T2 - Topic and statistical analysis
AU - Wang, Jie
AU - Wang, Xin
AU - Wang, Lei
AU - Peng, Yan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Jie Wang, Xin Wang, Lei Wang, Yan Peng. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (https://medinform.jmir.org),08.11.2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Informatics, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://medinform.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Background: The 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. Objective: In 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. Methods: We 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. Results: In 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). Conclusions: We 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.
AB - Background: The 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. Objective: In 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. Methods: We 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. Results: In 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). Conclusions: We 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.
KW - Information needs
KW - Online health community
KW - Topic analysis
KW - Young people
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85118925422
U2 - 10.2196/30356
DO - 10.2196/30356
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85118925422
SN - 2291-9694
VL - 9
JO - JMIR Medical Informatics
JF - JMIR Medical Informatics
IS - 11
M1 - e30356
ER -