Consumer health: searching confidence

From the Patient Centered Health Information Technology blog - “Confidence” in Health Searches a Poor Indicator of Finding Good Information talks about a new study from the Journal of Medical Internet Research noting:

1. Searching high-quality online resources improves consumers’ health knowledge; and
2. Consumers’ degree of “confidence” in their answers is not a good indicator of whether their answers are correct.

The JMIR study:
Lau AYS, Coiera E. Impact of Web Searching and Social Feedback on Consumer Decision Making: A Prospective Online Experiment. J Med Intern Res 2008;10(1):e2.