The purpose of this study was to examine how people perceived cyber counseling, to what extent they utilized it and what they counseled about, and to pave the way for universalizing cyber counseling. The subjects of this study were office workers from...
The purpose of this study was to examine how people perceived cyber counseling, to what extent they utilized it and what they counseled about, and to pave the way for universalizing cyber counseling. The subjects of this study were office workers from Seoul and Gyeonggi province, who were in their 20s and surfed the Internet. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 10.0 package, and the findings of the study were as follows:
1. 76.8 percent of the respondents, the largest group, were on the internet for one or more hours almost everyday. The males (84.3%) used it more than the females(68.9%), and the gap between the two was significant.
2. 40.8 percent, the largest group, acquired information about health through the internet, and 58.3 percent had an intention to use it to gather health information in the future. 59.3 percent of the men planned to gather information through the net, which outnumbered 57.3 percent of the women who had the same intention, and the difference was significant.
3. As for their experience of using online counseling about oral health, 46.4 percent(98 people), the largest group, were aware of online counseling but didn't use it. By gender, 52.4 percent of the females knew about that but didn't use it. and 50.9 percent were ignorant about that. The gap between them was significant.
4. When 46.4 percent who knew about online counseling without using it were asked why they didn't utilize it, 18.5 percent. the greatest rate. replied they had no problems to be advised. 25 percent of those whose oral-health status was moderate didn't gain access to online sites because they had no problems to counsel about, and the difference was significant.
5. Concerning what they wanted to counsel about, 11.4 percent of the online counseling users hoped to talk over scaling, and 34.1 percent of the others who didn't used it wanted to take counsel about scaling as well.
Online health counseling is on the rapid rise, but few research efforts have been dedicated to that. Although what the internet health counseling was about was analyzed by Yu Seon-mi, et aI.(1997) and An Ji-yeoung(2000), it's needed in the future to make a deeper study of the usability of cyber counseling, user satisfaction and user comprehension.