Web health info seekers tend not to check sources

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Web health info seekers tend not to check sources

Sun Oct 29, 4:05 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only one-fourth of Americans who search the Internet for health advice regularly check the source and date of the information they find to assess its quality, according to a survey released on Sunday by the Pew Internet Project.

About 10 million American adults -- or 7 percent of U.S. Internet users -- searched for information on a health topic or medical problem on a typical day in August, the non-profit think-tank said. That ranks health searches at about the same level of popularity as paying bills online, reading blogs or using the Internet to find a phone number or address.

Common health topics searched on the Web include specific diseases or medical treatments, exercise, nutrition, prescription drugs and alternative medicines, Pew said.

Just 15 percent of those surveyed said they always checked the source and date of the health information found online, while another 10 percent said they did so most of the time. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they checked the source and date sometimes, hardly ever or never, Pew said.

Pew researcher nah Fox said one possible reason why Internet users do not tend to check sources or dates is because of the health Web sites themselves. Only 2 percent of popular health sites display that information on their pages, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that is scheduled for release soon, Fox said.

Most Web users look for health information with a general search engine such as Google or , the study found.

"The question is whether consumers are doing the best that they can by going to general search engines," Fox said.

Several new search engines that focus only on medical topics have become available, including www.Healthline.com, www.Medstory.com, www.Healia.com, www.Mammahealth.com, and www.Kosmix.com.

"It will be neat to see if they are able to change consumers' behavior in searching for information on the Web," Fox said.

The Pew Internet Project survey data was gathered through telephone interviews with 2,928 adults in August. The survey was posted on the Internet at www.pewinternet.org

http://news./s/nm/20061029/hl_nm/internet_health_dc_1