Erratum

Eun-Young Yoo and Louise S. Robbins, ‘Understanding Middle-Aged Women's Health Information Seeking on the Web: A Theoretical Approach’. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(4) 2008, 577–590.

The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(4) 2008, 577–590. Please note that the following abstract was not included in the published article.

In this paper, the authors attempt to understand how and why middle-aged women use health-related websites based on a research model drawn from two expectancy- value based theories: the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the uses and gratifications approach. Middle-aged women were chosen as the target population of the study in consideration of their key roles as health-information seekers not only for themselves, but also as health-managers and caregivers for their family members. The proposed research model depicted a series of relationships among variables: Demographic variables; Past experience (PE); behaviral beleifs (be) and control beliefs (cp); Gratifications sought (GS), Attitude (A) and Perceived behavioral control (PBC); and Behavioral intention (BI).

Three hundred fifty four randomly selected middle-aged women in a mid-sized city in the United States responded to a mailed survey questionnaire. Data were analyzed mainly by multiple regressions, especially hierarchical multiple regression. The results of the study show that a middle-aged woman would more likely to go health-related Websites if she has more positive attitude toward (Attitude), stronger motivations for (GS), and more confidence (PBC) in using health-related Websites. Although the three factors were all significant, PBC was shown to be a relatively weaker predictor than Attitude and GS. The underlying reasons for the relatively weak effect of PBC are more likely due to the relatively high socio-economic characteristics of the study sample. This study also found strong direct effects of be and PE of using health-related Websites on middle-aged women's BI to use the Web for health purposes.