#151744 | AsPredicted

'Medical Information Search'
(AsPredicted #151744)


Author(s)
This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review.
It has 2 authors.
Pre-registered on
11/19/2023 04:30 PM (PT)

1) Have any data been collected for this study already?
No, no data have been collected for this study yet.

2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study?
(RQ1) How do generational differences (digital natives vs. digital immigrants) influence three types of online health information seeking (OHIS) and preventative health actions (PHA)?
(RQ2) Do types of OHIS mediate the effect of generations on PHA?
(RQ3) Do the frequency of online health information search (frequent vs. infrequent), gender (male vs. female), or chronic disease (presence of at least 1 chronic disease, yes vs. no) moderate the effect of generations on OHIS types and PHA?

3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured.
Three types of OHIS [Please indicate whether you have searched for the following health-related information during the past 12 months. (yes/no)] [Health Wellness Information Search (sports and fitness, nutrition and diet, general health knowledge); Health Guidance Information Search (medication guidance, disease consulting), Health Management Information Search (managing health conditions, participating in an online support group)]. PHA [After seeking health information and finding the information, did your health behavior change for the better? (Yes, no)/ did you see a doctor? (Yes, no)/ did you monitor your health yourself for any changes? (Yes, no)]; Covariates [Health-related Information Quality on the Internet (7-point), Trust of Health-related information on the Internet (7-point), Trust of US Healthcare Institutions (7-point), Health-related information search skills on the Internet (7-point), Race (White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Some Other Race), Ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino or Not Hispanic or Latino), and Political Affiliation (1 = democrat, 2 = republican, 3 = independent, 4 = other)]

4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to?
The participants will not be assigned to any condition. All participants will answer all questions.

Participants will be categorized into two generations: digital natives (born after 1980; 18-42) and digital immigrants (born in 1980 or earlier; 43 and above).

Participants will be categorized as frequent and infrequent OHIS based on search frequency question (How frequently did you search for online health information in the past 12 months? [frequent, infrequent, never]).

We will recruit participants from two generations (digital natives and digital immigrants) and two political affiliations (democrat and republican) utilizing four separate but identical surveys.

5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis.
We will run one-way ANCOVAs (RQ1), two-way ANCOVAs (RQ3), mediation analyses (Process Model 4) (RQ2), and linear regression analyses (IV = age, DV = HWIS, HGIS, HMIS, and PHA) with seven control variables.

6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations.
We will exclude participants (a) who fail the attention check question (If you are reading this, please do not answer this question and leave it blank; 1=Not at all true of me, 5=Extremely true of me), (b) who do not complete the survey, (c) who respond "never" to search frequency question, (d) when age and political affiliations do not match for respective surveys, and (e) who provides any non-sense responses.

7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size?
No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined.

We simultaneously post four separate but identical surveys on the Prolific targeting (1) digital immigrant and republican, (2) digital immigrant and democrat, (3) digital native and republican, and (4) digital native and democrat. Data collection for each survey will be stopped once 300 responses are collected. Deviations from this goal are completely because of Prolific software and outside of the researcher's control. We will conduct analyses combining all data (a total of 1200).

8) Anything else you would like to pre-register?
(e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?)

Socio-demographics will be used for descriptive statistics (annual checkup, health insurance, at least 1 chronic disease, gender, age, marital status, income, education, employment).

Version of AsPredicted Questions: 2.00