Barbara Niedźwiedzka

Knowledge of people’s health information needs and information behaviour can be used in planning health interventions in a way that they would meet people’s needs as accurately as possible and reflect how health information is acquired and processed.

The aim of the study presented in this paper was to analyze the usefulness of online forums as a source of scientific knowledge about people’s health needs and information behaviour, which could then be actively used in the area of public health.

Method. The content, a total of 1,575 entries, derived from two open forums devoted to depression in the years 2012–2015 was analysed using a set of mixed methods, including: a formal (quantitative) analysis of the material using the tools of computational linguistics (QDAMiner Simsat), inductive theme analysis EMIC, in the so-called hard variety, reinforced by elements of Awdiejew’s conversational grammar, and comparative method.

Results: Both health information needs and behaviour can be identified on Internet forums dedicated to health problems. Linguistic analysis of online forums can give very interesting results and clues that cannot be obtained using questionnaires or personal interviews. It seems, however, that it should never be the only method used in investigating this matter. Since there are several intervening factors that may distort reliability of findings, determining whether we are dealing with real or created needs or behaviour requires confirming the results of the linguistic analysis of the forums using other methods.

The rate of obesity in Poland increases rapidly, especially fast among children and adolescents. An important and also fully accepted by the society ways of fighting this phenomenon are social marketing and educational interventions. To make these activities effective they have to keep pace with changes in information behavior of target groups. But the importance of raising information competency of consumers is not fully understood by those who design and implement health programs and health Information behavior and literacy rarely are the subject of research. The goal of this study is to find where and how Polish citizens look for diet related information, what barriers they encounter, and whether they behave differently in comparison with citizens of other European countries.
Method: A survey administered through computer-assisted on-line web-interviewing to a probabilistic, stratified by age and gender, sample of respondents in Poland (n = 600). Comparison sample – same number of respondents in Belgium, Denmark, Italy and UK.
Results: 49% of surveyed Poles do not know where to look for healthy diet related information and have bigger problems with this task then the respondents in other surveyed countries. In comparison with Danish, a probability that a Pole knows where to look for such information decreases twice. Individual and environmental determinants strongly affect information knowledge and behavior. Men, educated, poorer and sicker persons have bigger problems with finding information and are less likely to attempt to look for it. Majority of respondents uses Internet and Google to look for healthy diet information. Only 23% of Polish respondents would turn to their GPs for healthy eating advice.

Health information literacy allows people to find, evaluate and apply information regarding health and health services utilisation. The goal of this analysis is to present: the self-assessment of health information literacy done by Poles, socio-demographic determinants of this assessment, and to discuss its possible consequences in light of self-efficacy concept. This knowledge highlights certain aspect of society’s’ health literacy, and can be useful in designing pro-health educational interventions in such a way so they meet the needs and capabilities of target groups.
Method. Direct questionnaire survey with randomly selected, stratified by age and gender group of respondents (+15, n10000, what was 67% of the sample). The study design and the survey questionnaire were developed by the HLS-EU researchers. The survey was conducted by TNS Opinion in July and August 2011 in 8 European countries including Poland. Among 47 questions in HLS-EU questionnaire, 30 questions were selected as those that can serve as indicators of health information competency, 10 question for each of 3 areas of information skills: seeking, evaluation and application. In this study only data regarding Polish population was analysed.
Results. Approximately 38% of Polish population assess their health information literacy as low. Respondents claim that they have difficulty in finding, evaluating and applying health information. Low level of self-assessment can be observed more often among men, elderly and people with low level of education, and also among respondents who see their health status as bad or suffer from at least one chronic illness, and also among these who are in economically difficult situation. Among tasks connected with seeking information most difficult for the respondents were: finding information about political changes that may affect health, information regarding coping with stress or depression, information about vaccinations and health screenings and information on symptoms and treatments of illnesses that concern them. As most difficult to evaluate Polish respondents find the reliability of information about diseases and health risks provided by mass media. In area of application, most difficult to apply is information regarding activities that improve health and well-being in community.
Conclusions. Low assessment of self-efficacy in looking for and using health information by one third of Polish respondents may indicate real deficiency of skills, may demotivate them to undertake such activities, and may hinder educational interventions. Elderly, low educated, ill or assessing their health as bad persons should be in first place the aim of educational interventions to raise their information literacy. This can be beneficial for improving their health literacy.

The aim of the analysis is to present the subject-matter and the dynamics of the literature in the field of public health and health services, in the years 2000-2012, through the bibliometric analysis of the literature in 11 subject areas. Research questions: Which areas of public health and health services abound at this period in the largest number of publications? Can we observe in the period 2000-2012 growth in number of publications? Is it possible to see any patterns in the dynamics of publishing in particular areas? In which journals the articles on topics related to public health and health services are published most often?
Method: The thematic areas of public health were identified following the basic functions of the public health highlighted in subject literature, and widened by inclusion of “management and organization of health care” and “health economics”. The Polish Medical Bibliography (PBL) was searched to find all types of publications published in the years 2000-2012, indexed with the major headings (descriptors) corresponding with the selected topics. The data obtained from PBL was processed by especially written computer program.
Results: A total of 24,631 articles on predetermined topics were recorded in PBL, in the chosen period. Dominate publications on “management and organization”, “law regulation” and “health economics”. Together they constitute more than half of all publications. Next, most frequently presented in publications issue was “monitoring the health of the population”. Incomparably less is publications on the prevention of diseases and their causes. During this period, there are only few comparative studies published showing Poland among other countries. Also, very little work is published about the aging of the Polish population seen as a public health problem. From 2000 to 2010, the number of publications in the entire public health area has remained relatively stable. From 2010 begins gradual decrease in the number of articles in almost all fields, with the exception of “disease monitoring”,” prevention of accidents and injuries” and “epidemiological surveillance”. More than half (51%) of the publications were published in 55 journals, of which only 20 deal extensively with issues of public health. Other articles are distributed in more than 300 other bio-medical journals.
Conclusions: Public health and health services fields, as areas of research and professional discussion in Poland are dominated by issues of management, organization, economics and law regulations. Number of publications in all analyzed subjects (public health + management+economics) in the years 2000-2012, shows a weak growth, with significant differences between individual areas and sub-areas. In such areas as “disease prevention”, “management”, “health economics”,” quality of care” issues - the number of publications is falling. Dispersion of publications in hundreds of magazines, mostly bio-medical, probably is not conducive to the consolidation of public health.