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by Humphrey Taylor

Almost 100 million adults go online to look for health care information (Harris calls them cyberchondriacs). On average, they do so three times a month. Mostly they do so using a portal or search engine, rather than going directly to a particular site.

These are the results of a nationwide Harris poll of 675 adults who are online from home, office, school, library or some other location. They were surveyed by telephone between March 22 and 26, 2001.

Key findings of this survey include:

• 75% of all adults online (47% of all adults) use the Internet to look for health care information. However, only 16% say they do this "often", while most do so "sometimes" (30%), or "hardly ever" (30%).
  
• This 75% of all those online amounts to 97 million adults nationwide.
  
• On average those who ever look for health care information online do so 3.3 times every month. This varies from 6.1 times among heavy Internet users to 1.3 times among light users.
  
• A slender 52% majority of those who look for health care information do so using a portal or search engine which allows them to search for the health information they want across many different websites. About a quarter (24%) go directly to a site that focuses only on health-related topics and one in six (16%) go first to a general site that focuses on many topics that may have a section on health issues.
  

More heavy Internet users (57%) and medium users (56%) than light users (44%) use a search engine or a portal.

These Harris Poll data show that the Internet continues to be used by huge, and growing, numbers of the public interested in getting information about particular diseases or treatments or staying healthy. The results also demonstrate the critical importance to health care websites of being quickly and easily accessible to search engines and portals.

Base: Have access to Internet

"How often do you look for information online about health topics – often, sometimes, hardly ever or never?"

* Includes those online from home, office, school, library or other location

Base: Ever look for health care information online

"About how many times have you looked for information online about health topics in the last month?"

* Heavy Internet users were online 8 hours or more in the last week.

Light Internet users were online less than 3 hours in the last week.

Base: Ever look for health care information online

"The last time you looked for information online about a health topic where did you FIRST go to get the information your were interested in? Did you FIRST go to a …?"

* Heavy Internet users were online 8 hours or more in the last week.

Light Internet users were online less than 3 hours in the last week.

This Harris Poll was conducted by telephone within the United States between March 22 – 26, 2001, among a nationwide cross section of 1011 adults of whom 675 are online. Figures for age, sex, race, education, number of adults and number of voice/telephone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.

In theory, with a sample of this size (675), one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 4 percentage points of what they would be if the entire adult population had been polled with complete accuracy. Unfortunately, there are several other possible sources of error in all polls or surveys that are probably more serious than theoretical calculations of sampling error. They include refusals to be interviewed (non-response), question wording and question order, interviewer bias, weighting by demographic control data and screening (e.g., for likely voters). It is difficult or impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors.

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Q705, 710, 715