Health Knowledge

Usually we expect folks with direct experience on a topic to have greater knowledge about that topic.  Seems reasonable.  This survey, at least when it comes to health, suggests otherwise.  It finds "people with a family history of sodium-related diseases did not have more knowledge on the relationship between sodium consumption and risk of getting certain diseases than those with no history."

In other words, direct experience with sodium-based diseases did not lead to greater knowledge about the problems of sodium consumption.

If you're not into following links on suspicious blogs like this one, here's the key graph from the press release:

Researchers from North Carolina State University analyzed data collected from 489 consumers who participated in a quantitative Internet survey designed to gather knowledge and attitudes towards dietary sodium, sodium in foods, and health. The consumers were divided into two groups: group one, for those who had no family history, and group two, for those that did. Results showed that having a disease history did not increase the level of knowledge that excess sodium intake increases the risk of getting diseases.

This is kinda odd and interesting and a little bit scary.  Not that it's about sodium and salt, but if we broadly extend this to health in general it says a lot about what people know, or don't know, even when they're directly exposed to the problem through family.  You'd expect greater knowledge.  This raises some important questions and challenges for those in the health communication field when it comes to informing the public.  If even direct experience with a health problem doesn't help, how much can you expect a health campaign to succeed?

Fun Friday

It's the first Friday of Lent -- no meat, sure, but also that means it's time to toss together a bunch of stuff this week that modestly touches on what people learn from the media.  Okay, in some cases it's a stretch, especially the first one.

• Exercise, according to a study, curbs the cravings for pot.  I repeat this study for no other reason than (1) I find it humorous with lots of potential for jokes and (2) it's based on an N of 12.  Twelve?  Sheesh.
• To keep a health theme, this story says a diet with olive oil can reduce heart risks.  I think we knew this one already, but this is based on a meta-analysis of 50 earlier studies.  I did a meta-analysis once.  Once.
• In a case of the startlingly obvious, giving students quizzes before a test makes them do better on the test.  In fairness, an earlier piece of research I blogged about suggested that practice tests are better than studying at improving learning.  So I don't want to be too snarky here.  Only a little.
• Gotta touch on social networking and here's my favorite study of the day, that use of social networking by homeless kids leads to risky sexual behavior.  But it can increase or decrease these behaviors, depending on use, the study points out.  Yes, can I have a duh from the choir?

Trusting Health Information

We get our health information from lots of sources: family and friends, of course, and the ever-present Internet, but also the news, those annoying pharmaceutical TV ads, maybe even from an actual doctor. 

An experiment published last month in Communication Research takes an interesting approach and a huge N (555) to find people "were more likely to take action based on the information sourced from a Web site than from a blog or a personal home page." 

I'd hope so. 

But in mass comm, we often dare to research the obvious.  I'm being a bit snarky because what seems obvious still requires verifying and validating.  Plus, from the abstract, there's more to the study; unfortunately I can view only the abstract.  There's a 3-way interaction but trying to understand one is hard enough without relying on a single sentence from an abstract, so I won't even try.

The authors do write, in discussing the main effect above: "The effect was mediated by perceived level of gatekeeping and perceived information completeness."  This suggests to me somehow perceptions of gatekeeping and completeness may reduce the differences found between a web site and blog/personal pages.  I suspect it has a great deal to do with increasing the perception of source credibility, which often plays a role in persuasion.