Online health communication about human genetics: perceptions and preferences of Internet users

Unprecedented advancements in human genetics research necessitate keeping the public abreast of new information, applications, and implications and the Internet represents an important method of communicating with the public. Our research used cross-sectional self-report survey data collected from a diverse convenience sample of 780 Internet users in two states. Multivariate regression analysis explored the relationships between experiences, perceptions, and preferences for online health and genetics communication. Online health information seeking was associated with previous genetic information seeking, comfort with online genetic communication, perceived risk for genetic abnormality, being female, and having more education. Comfort with online genetics communication was associated with a preference for online genetic information, previous online health and off-line genetics information seeking, having a healthy lifestyle, believing in the positive impact of human genetics research, and being female. Perceiving online health information to be accurate was associated with preferring the Internet for genetics communication, being older, less educated, and perceiving Internet use as anonymous. Preferring online genetics communication to other communication channels was associated with perceiving online health information as accurate, being comfortable receiving online genetics information, having lower intrinsic religiosity, and being male. The implications of findings for Web-based health message design are discussed.