On-line moms

Abstract

Computers have shown great promise in the area of health promotion. Never before has there been a medium that could disseminate such a large amount of health information so rapidly. In recent years, the Internet has shown enormous potential for educating people about health. This project was designed to explore how parents of young children use the Internet for pediatric health information and to make recommendations for developing effective World Wide Web (WWW) sites to deliver pediatric health information to parents. Twenty mothers of young children (N=20) participated in focus groups which explored their Internet use with regards to pediatric health information using principles of McGuire’s Communication Input/Output Matrix (1989) and Petty’s & Cacioppo’s (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model. Recommendations are made for the development of Internet-based health communication messages as well as for future research in this emerging field.