110 million people sometimes look for health information online, up from 97 million a year ago
On average, they do so three times a month
Most use a portal or search engine
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by Humphrey Taylor

Ehealth – the use of the Internet related to health and health care continues to grow.

One hundred and ten million adults sometimes go online to look for health care information (Harris Interactive^SM calls them "cyberchondriacs"). On average, they do so three times a month, searching mainly through portals or search engines rather than by going directly to particular sites.

These are the results of The Harris Poll^® , a nationwide survey of 707 adults (18+) who are online from home, office, school, library or some other location. Surveys were administered by telephone between March 13 and 19, 2002.

Key findings of this survey include:

• 80% of all adults who are online (i.e., 53% of all adults) sometimes use the Internet to look for health care information. However, only 18% say they do this "often", while most do so "sometimes" (35%), or "hardly ever" (27%).
  
• This 80% of all those online amounts to 110 million cyberchondriacs nationwide. This compares with 54 million in 1998, 69 million in 1999 and 97 million last year.
  
• On average those who ever look for health care information online do so three times every month.

• A slender majority (53%) of those who look for health care information does 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 (26%) go directly to a site that focuses only on health-related topics and one in eight (12%) goes first to a general site that focuses on many topics that may have a section on health issues.
  

Cyberchondriacs (those who go online for health information) tend to be younger (which fits the profile of frequent Internet users), and they are better educated and more affluent than the general population. Cyberchondriacs include 82% of people aged 18 to 29, 84% of those with postgraduate education and 77% of people with household incomes of over $75,000.

These 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 about staying healthy. The results also demonstrate the critical importance to health care websites of the need to be quickly and easily accessible through search engines and portals.

Data from other Harris Interactive research show that, increasingly, cyberchondriacs are using the sites of established organizations – academic, governmental, pharmaceutical, etc. – rather than using "pure ehealth" sites.

Humphrey Taylor is the chairman of The Harris Poll^®, Harris Interactive.

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

Base: Have access to Internet

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

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

Base: Ever look for health care information online

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

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

"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 …?"

Base: Ever look for health care information online

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

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

Demographic profile of people who have looked for health information online

The Harris Poll^® was conducted by telephone within the United States between March 13 and 19, 2002 among a nationwide cross section of 707 adults who are online, a sub-sample of 1,017 adults. Figures for age, sex, race, education, number of adults and number of voice/telephone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.

In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 3 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 impossible to quantify the errors that may result from these factors.

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J16094
Q805 – Q815