Main Article Content

Social media use for medicine information seeking behaviour among undergraduate students via the prism of the innovation decision process


Omoniyi J Ola-Olorun
Olajire J Oyeniran
Ayodapo O Jegede
Bamidele O Ogunlade

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the level of adoption of social media for medical information-seeking behaviour (MISB) among students of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria based on the prism of Roger’s innovation-decision process theory.


Methods: The study was a cross-sectional survey of 429 students. Primary data were collected with a set of questionnaires comprising two main sections which sought to elicit information, first, on the adoption level of social media for medicine information employing a Likert-type scale with five alternative responses and weighting scores of 1 - 5, and second, on use of social media for MISB on a dichotomous (yes/no) scale. Collected data were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics at 5 % level of significance.


Results: The results show that adoption of social media tools for sourcing medicine information among the students was at a persuasion level (MWA 2.10) and correlates with the finding on the dichotomous scale that they were barely (28.7 %) using the tools.


Conclusion: Social media for medicine information-seeking among students of OAU have not been effectively adopted and their use is infrequent. Furthermore, studies on the use of social media may be better assessed using the innovation-decision theory process model rather than a simple dichotomous scale.


Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 1596-9827
print ISSN: 1596-5996