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Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition

Based on decision sciences and information processing theories, how information is acquired is the foundation of decisions and choices subsequently made. Adapting the Active Information Search methodology, the aim for this study is to examine what information potential mental health clients look for...

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Autores principales: Tuliao, Antover P., Mullet, Natira D., Hawkins, Lindsey G., Holyoak, Derek, Weerts, Marisa, Inyang, Anthony
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8758187/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35043089
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41347-021-00238-y
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author Tuliao, Antover P.
Mullet, Natira D.
Hawkins, Lindsey G.
Holyoak, Derek
Weerts, Marisa
Inyang, Anthony
author_facet Tuliao, Antover P.
Mullet, Natira D.
Hawkins, Lindsey G.
Holyoak, Derek
Weerts, Marisa
Inyang, Anthony
author_sort Tuliao, Antover P.
collection PubMed
description Based on decision sciences and information processing theories, how information is acquired is the foundation of decisions and choices subsequently made. Adapting the Active Information Search methodology, the aim for this study is to examine what information potential mental health clients look for in a service provider through their use of search strings. College students (N = 519) from a large public university from the southwest USA (data collection from August to December 2018) were asked in an online survey to imagine themselves needing mental health services and list down the search string they would use in a search engine (e.g., Google). Content analysis indicated seven search string categories: location of nearby services, symptoms, types of services/specialty, asking for advice, questions about resources, questions about whether they have a problem, and looking for the “best.” Further, multivariate logistic analysis indicated that gender, psychological distress, perceived normativeness of utilizing mental health services, and type of medical insurance were associated with the type of search string the participant used in searching for mental health services. Understanding how individuals search for mental health services can help guide mental health practitioners in what information should be included in their websites. Further findings and implications are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-87581872022-01-14 Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition Tuliao, Antover P. Mullet, Natira D. Hawkins, Lindsey G. Holyoak, Derek Weerts, Marisa Inyang, Anthony J Technol Behav Sci Article Based on decision sciences and information processing theories, how information is acquired is the foundation of decisions and choices subsequently made. Adapting the Active Information Search methodology, the aim for this study is to examine what information potential mental health clients look for in a service provider through their use of search strings. College students (N = 519) from a large public university from the southwest USA (data collection from August to December 2018) were asked in an online survey to imagine themselves needing mental health services and list down the search string they would use in a search engine (e.g., Google). Content analysis indicated seven search string categories: location of nearby services, symptoms, types of services/specialty, asking for advice, questions about resources, questions about whether they have a problem, and looking for the “best.” Further, multivariate logistic analysis indicated that gender, psychological distress, perceived normativeness of utilizing mental health services, and type of medical insurance were associated with the type of search string the participant used in searching for mental health services. Understanding how individuals search for mental health services can help guide mental health practitioners in what information should be included in their websites. Further findings and implications are discussed. Springer International Publishing 2022-01-13 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8758187/ /pubmed/35043089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41347-021-00238-y Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Tuliao, Antover P.
Mullet, Natira D.
Hawkins, Lindsey G.
Holyoak, Derek
Weerts, Marisa
Inyang, Anthony
Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title_full Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title_fullStr Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title_full_unstemmed Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title_short Searching for Mental Health Services: Search Strings and Information Acquisition
title_sort searching for mental health services: search strings and information acquisition
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8758187/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35043089
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s41347-021-00238-y
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