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College students' sexual health information needs and source preferences in relation to worry about sexual health outcomes

Introduction. This study aims to broaden the current understanding of the relation between information needs and source preferences regarding sexually transmitted infections and worry about sexual health outcomes in college students. Understanding this relation is important because of its possible implications for sexual health decision-making. Method. An online survey was conducted on 276 college students in Croatia in 2017 using a quantitative research approach. Analysis. Quantitative analyses were carried out using the IBM SPSS statistical package. Besides descriptive statistics, the Pearson chi-squared test and the non-parametric Kruskal Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were used to test possible differences between the groups in the sample. Spearman's rank correlation was used for testing statistical dependence between variables. Results. Worry about already present adverse sexual health outcomes was most strongly related to information seeking and resulted in the greatest range of information needs and demands. Individuals experiencing more frequent worry about sexual health outcomes searched for information directed at coping with already suspected negative sexual health outcomes, but not on their future prevention. Worry about already present symptoms was most strongly related to more frequent use of friends, girlfriend or boyfriend, Internet forums and websites as information sources. Conclusions. Results of this study show that there are correlations between college students' sexual health information needs and source preferences and their worry about sexual health outcomes.

college students ; sexual health ; information needs ; information sources ; worry

Sung Un Kim is an Associate Professor Department of Library and Information Science at the Catholic University of America