COVID-19 and Health Information-Seeking Behavior: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Introduction: Access to timely, accurate, and appropriate health information during outbreaks such as COVID-19 can reduce the spread of the disease. For this purpose, the present review explores individuals' COVID -19-related health informationseeking behavior.Methods: The present study is a scoping review, in which the data were collected by seeking the WoS, PubMed, and Scopus databases up to January 1, 2022. Inclusion criteria included papers in the English language in line with the study's objective.Results: The results of the study showed that the most important objectives of COVID-19-related health information seeking are categorized according to the symptoms and causes of the disease, disease control and prevention methods, treatment, economic and social issues, and pandemic-related news and information, as well as governments' programs. The most important searched resources are also categorized into "mass media", "social media", "internet", "official and government website", and "friends and relatives".Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with different objectives seek various resources to acquire information and increase their knowledge about the disease. Given the importance of health information and information acquisition from reliable sources, different social classes must be trained to acquire reliable health information from accurate sources and methods. Accordingly, health institutions and organizations should provide purposive educational programs to improve health information literacy among different social classes.