Information Seeking and Evaluation of Online Sexual Health Resources among Late Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescents increasingly rely on the Internet as a private resource for sexual health information. Despite growing interest in adults' use of online health resources in HCI, we lack a deeper understanding of adolescents' information-seeking processes and assessments of trustworthy online health information. We conducted a qualitative, observational study of late adolescents as they searched for sexual health and sexuality information and a "think aloud" protocol to concurrently capture user thoughts and perceptions of online content in situ. Our results reveal a four-phased process that late adolescent users employ for searching and evaluating sexual health information on the web, as well as several emergent themes regarding credible and trustworthy information.