The Estimation of Consumer’s Health Information Needs and Information Seeking

Abstract

The study purpose is to evaluate the attitude of consumers towards health information needs, behavior, and the source of health information. With this, it also identifies the hurdles being faced by the patients while collecting of health information. A quantitative research method used to find the barriers of consumer’ health information seeking. For data collection a questionnaire, consisted of close ended questions. The population of the study comprised of three public hospitals. The data was collected in the purposive sampling techniques. Out of 300 population, total 263 responds with the response rate of (87%) and was analyzed by using descriptive statistics through SPSS. Results of the study revealed that respondents prefer to seek information from doctors and have more satisfaction about the information collected through them whereas the patients consider the information collected from internet and other sources as less reliable. The study suggested that medical libraries and librarians should take step to provide their services and sources to the consumers/patients for their health information need and seek.