Relations between Internet use, socio-economic status (SES), social support and subjective health
- Silje C. Wangberg1,*,
- Hege K. Andreassen1,
- Hans-Ulrich Prokosch2,
- Silvina Maria Vagos Santana3,
- Tove Sørensen1 and
- Catharine E. Chronaki4
- 1Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine, University Hospital of Northern Norway, PO Box 35, N-9038 Tromsø, Norway
- 2Department of Medical Informatics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
- 3Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
- 4Foundation for Research and Technology, Heraklion, Greece
- *Corresponding author. E-mail: silje.camilla.wangberg{at}telemed.no
SUMMARY
This study aimed to explore relations between Internet use, socio-economic status (SES), social support and subjective health. Participants were from representative samples between 15 and 80 years of age from seven different European countries. Two different survey datasets were used: (i) eHealth trends (eHT; N = 7934) and (ii) the European social survey (ESS2; N = 11248). Internet users who had used the Internet for health purposes were compared with Internet users who had not used it for health purposes. Structural equation modelling was used to assess the relationships between SES, Internet use, social support and subjective health. Use of other media was compared to Internet use in relation to social support and subjective health. Internet use was found to be more closely related to social support and subjective health than use of other media. Internet use was also found to be a plausible mediator between SES and subjective health, especially through interacting with social support.
Key words
- © 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commerical use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
