A grounded theory study on medical students' proxy online health information seeking behavior.

Background: Although Internet has become the main way of access to health and medical information for most young people today, it might not be the case with older people. The elderly that have difficulty using the Internet rely largely on their family members to obtain and evaluate online health and medical information.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate medical students' proxy health information seeking behavior for their family members, and to look into how they search, evaluate, and even apply health information from the Internet. The paper is going to explore the influencing factors of health information seeking behavior of medical students as well as the concerns and difficulties they might encounter during the searching process.

Methods: Based on grounded theory, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 medical students, from whom data were collected for analysis. Through the procedure of three-level coding, the theoretical framework of medical students' proxy online health information seeking behavior was constructed.

Results: Findings of this study include the factors influencing medical student' proxy online health information seeking, the emotional attitudes of the interviewees, and the results of proxy information seeking behavior. Students' individual traits, information itself and the search platform all exercise influences on their seeking behavior. Interviewees mainly stay doubtful about the authenticity of health information and feel concerned over their parents' physical conditions. Proxy seeking results are generally marked by positive feedback and negative feedback.

Conclusions: It satisfies the family members' demand for health information that medical students seek online health information for them, and such behavior has a positive impact on the family members' physical condition. Still, to evaluate the quality of health information from the Internet remains a major challenge that medical students face. Only through the joint efforts of both medical students and the related departments could high quality health information be obtained. Besides, for effective delivery of health information, medical students should also stay patient while communicating with their family members.