Relationship and Impact of Information Seeking Anxiety and Personality Traits on Health Information Seeking Behavior during COVID-19

Abstract

Background: During covid-19 period not only general public was victim of anxiety besides all medical professional also face anxiety and change their Information seeking behaviour according their personality. Curiosity is in human nature with the easy access to internet the new horizon to information has been opened. People searching trends have shown that they are interested in health risk to health treatment for their health related problems.

Aim: In this study examined the influences of anxiety (ISA) and Personality traits (PT) on health information seeking behaviour (HISB) among the Doctor, paraprofessional and final year medical students who are frontline worker during pandemic situation.

Methodology: The study adopted survey method with non-probability convenience sampling to collect statistical. Questionnaires werefiled from 313 participants by utilizing convenient sampling and analyzing the data through SPSS.

Results: The result showed that significant relation between personality traits, information seeking anxiety and health information seeking behaviour. In medical library user PT has significant impact on HISB (p<.05), (AVG_PT=.002) and ISA has impact on HISB but it is not significant in medical professional (β -.070) value shows ISA has negative impact on HISB.

Practical implication: This study will be beneficial for information professionals, health care workers, policy makers and administrators to access of information resources in hybrid format.

Conclusion: Medical professional’s plays an important role in our society. They work hard and served the nation during pandemic situation. Anxiety is natural phenomena to every person. So medical professional also feel anxietybut the medical profession demands its professionals to stay cool, calm and free of anxiety by having analytical and cognitive skills, in order to fulfill the needs of their profession. This research helps to understand that ISA has no significant impact on HISB while PT has significant impact on HISB.

Keywords: Information Anxiety, Health information seeking behaviour, Personality Traits